


The Bloody Ones

by kungfuwaynewho



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kungfuwaynewho/pseuds/kungfuwaynewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Minbari tell a fable about a dark race of butchers who live in the dead of space.  They sneak into civilized places to hunt and kill.  A cautionary story for children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Veniant Carnifices

**Author's Note:**

> Set early Season Three, spoilers through "Points of Departure." Standard disclaimers apply.

I. Veniant Carnifices  


 

_8 February 2260_

 

_1000 hours_

 

Jayaram had passed being scared a long time ago; now he was terrified, sitting against the wall in his quarters in the pitch black. The hull breach alarm had sounded, and an automated recording ordered everyone to remain in their quarters, put themselves between a hatch and the hull. Jay had already been in his quarters, having returned from his night shift not fifteen minutes earlier. He retrieved his coveralls from the pile of dirty clothes on the floor of his tiny room and waited for the call for all station maintenance personnel to report, but the call never came.

 

Jay had thought about just going out anyway, but he didn't know where the breach was, if it was under control, and he really didn't feel like getting sucked out into space. He didn't hear the tell-tale creaking of the bulkheads, though, so he felt reasonably confident that it was on the other side of the station, or was small, or both.

 

Just as he was beginning to convince himself that there had been a false alarm, the lights went out. Completely out. "Lights. Lights!" No response. Jay had fumbled around, his quarters suddenly alien and hard to navigate for all that they were five paces square; he barked his shins on a table and nearly fell, cursing. He finally made it to the panel next to the Babcom, pressed the buttons, but he might as well have saved himself the journey across the room; nothing happened. The Babcom itself was dead, too. Jay sat down, back against the wall. Cascading systems failure? Would heat go next, the air recycling? But no, he wasn't getting cold; quite the contrary, he felt like he was burning up. He could hear the hiss of the air unit in his room, and he clung to that tiny shred of comfort.

 

Jay waited. It was unnerving, sitting in the dark, eyes wide open but nothing other than total, complete blackness in front of him. He wondered if this was what it was like to be blind. Time lost all meaning. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting in the dark. It could have been one hour, it could have been five. He tried to count his heartbeats, but lost track sometime after three hundred. 

 

He couldn't stay in here anymore. Hull breach be damned. Jay stood, hands out, and made his way right in front of the door. Waited. Nothing. Maybe the automatic sensor was on the same circuit as the lights. "Door, open." Obstinate silence from the door. "Open!" And the panic started settling in. Jay returned to the instrument panel, found the toggle at the bottom, switched it back and forth. Nothing. Back to the door, pressing on it with his hands, then hitting it, then kicking it, then screaming at it. Minutes, hours, who knew? Nothing.

 

Jay stumbled back into the blackness of his room, heart threatening to hammer straight out of his chest. He knew he had to get himself under control, knew that he just needed to wait until the systems came back online, but he stumbled over the table again and this time he did fall, head hitting the wall as he came down. Bright white pain flashed behind his eyes, and after a few gasping breaths Jay reached up and gingerly touched the top of his head, expecting to pull his hand back sticky and wet with blood, but it was dry. He'd managed to keep from cracking his skull open; small blessings.

 

Jay rolled over onto his back, swearing he would not cry. He hadn't cried in fifteen years, not since he'd buried his mother, and he was not going to cry now. 

 

There was a pounding outside his door.

 

Jay pulled himself up on his elbows, looked that way, instinct stronger than intellect; blackness, of course. There was a horrible wrenching sound, metal on metal, and Jay found himself suffused with calm. This was it. Overall hull integrity had finally given way, and the station was tearing apart. Jay only hoped it would be quick. Then his door opened, tugged upward in starts and jerks. Dim red light in the corridor outlined the dark silhouette of a figure in his door, oddly shaped; probably carrying equipment.

 

"Here, I'm in here! Thank goodness." Jay pulled himself to his feet, shaking, and by the time he looked back up the figure had entered. His next words died before they passed his lips. He could smell something, and he thought it came from the person in his quarters. A sickly sweet, rotten smell. Jay wanted to ask what his name was, if he worked for the station, if he knew anything about the breach, but instead found himself backing up against the wall. He thought he'd been afraid before. He thought he'd known panic. He had never felt anything like this.

 

The figure came closer, relentless. Jay had one moment to wish that he could have died in the vacuum of space before it was on him. Then there was pain, and there were tears, and there were screams.

 

It was a long time before Jay finally died.

 

***

 

_0900 hours_

 

Ivanova had just ran back to her quarters to grab some paperwork when the breach alarm sounded. She called Sheridan, then Garibaldi, then anyone she could think of on her link, but there was nothing, not even static. It was dead. She went to the Babcom, but it was dead, too. She wasn't going to twiddle her thumbs in her quarters, but by the time she'd decided to go out and see what the hell was going on, the lights went out and her quarters were sealed.

 

Ivanova spent two minutes running through every curse she knew, in every language, and after she calmed down she dropped to her hands and knees, slowly crawled into her bedroom, to her closet, to the tool kit on the floor in the corner. No need to hurry; she didn't want to give herself a concussion, break a bone. Tool kit tucked into her jacket, she spent a few minutes feeling around for a flashlight, even though she knew she didn't have one, hadn't had one since she'd lost the last one when she transferred to B5. She didn't even have any fucking candles. She crawled back to the Babcom, slow and steady wins the race. She kept her eyes closed; it was easier than confronting the total darkness. Settling down on the floor, she pulled the tool kit out, felt around till her fingers identified what she needed: a screwdriver, an Allen wrench, pliers. She already had her pocket knife. 

 

Off came the panel underneath the Babcom, exposing the workings underneath. Ivanova carefully felt around, trying to identify everything before she started. There was the main wiring, there was the video hook-up, there was the audio. And there was the emergency power, a self-contained battery unit. The Babcom should have cut over as soon as main power was lost; she'd have to do it manually. Ivanova cut the main wiring, stripped them by feel, hooked them over. 

 

Cool blue light flooded the room, insanely bright after half an hour of darkness. Ivanova stood, worked the kink out of her neck. "Call to Captain Sheridan." The bland computer voice informed her that a call could not be placed to that unit. "Call to Chief Garibaldi." Same response. She tried half a dozen others to no avail. "Open a channel to Stellarcom." A channel could not be opened. "Open priority gold channel, voice authorization Ivanova." Nothing.

 

"Motherfucking piece of shit son of a bitch!" There, she felt better. Using the light from the Babcom - and that's all it was good for now - she gathered up her tools and went to the door. She had to move her couch first, but then she got to the access panel and removed it, too, and started to worm her way in between the bulkheads toward the hatch mechanism.

 

***

 

_0845 hours_

 

"It's not a toy." 

 

"I know it's not a toy, Delenn." Sheridan had met her outside her quarters a few minutes ago, and they were on their way to a Council meeting. She was wearing her pretty green dress, the one that clung to her figure more than her usual robes, and Sheridan allowed himself a moment to sneak an appraising look. 

 

"You just want to play with it. How do you put it? 'Take it out for some spins.'"

 

"I do not just want to take the _White Star_ out for a spin. It's a brand-new ship, a mix of technologies, and I need to know what it's capable of. A weapon is only as good as the training you have to use it."

 

"Of course, John," she said, meaning nothing of the sort. Sheridan grinned down at her, ready to suggest that she could come along, supervise, when the alarm sounded.

 

"Hull breach! Hull breach! Remain in your quarters. Secure a hatch between yourself and the hull. Wait for the all-clear. Move in an orderly fashion. Do not panic. Hull breach! Hull breach!" Sheridan had grabbed Delenn's hand after the first 'hull breach' and pulled her back in the direction of her quarters, running. Proving that idiotic behavior was universal, all throughout Green Sector aliens poked their heads out of their doors, trying to see what was going on.

 

"Get into your quarters, all of you! Right now!" Sheridan shouted, and then they entered Delenn's rooms. Sheridan opened a line on his link. "Ivanova, come in!" Silence. He pushed the button to open a line again, lifted the link to his ear. He didn't hear the familiar low hum. Delenn's voice on the other side of the room. "Ivanova, come in! Garibaldi! C and C! Damn it!" He looked up - Delenn was in front of her Babcom, trying to place calls. "Anything?"

 

"The Babcom does not appear to be working." He joined her, resisted the urge to thump the wall. 

 

"Open priority gold channel, voice authorization Sheridan." Normally he hated the computer's voice, but he would have given anything to hear it now. The comm system just sat there, unresponsive, screen dark. "Okay. Shit." He took a deep breath, looked down at Delenn, who was watching him closely. "I want you to stay here."

 

"The recording said to stay in one's quarters. You should not leave."

 

"I'm not going to just sit here, not if the station's in trouble." He squeezed her upper arms, smiled down in as reassuring a way as he could muster. He hoped it didn't turn out to be a grimace. "Just stay here, okay?"

 

The lights went out. He felt her step closer to him, hands just resting on his chest. "Has the station lost power?" she asked, and the question sent a jab of alarm through him. He listened, blocked out the sounds of their own breathing, the steady clip-clop of his pulse. 

 

"No, the air recycler's still on." Then Delenn squeezed his shoulders; he could feel the warmth from her hands even through his jacket and shirt.

 

"Don't move." She left him then, and he heard her slowly make her way across the room. Sheridan thought about following her anyway, but couldn't remember exactly where her low little table was, and didn't really want to trip and kill himself. Then he heard a hiss, and a candle flame filled the room with flickering light. Delenn lit a few more - the little table was clear over there, damn it, he would have been fine - and went to one of her lamps, waved her hand over it. No response. "What happens if there's a hull breach?" she asked.

 

"Emergency bulkheads should drop, seal it off. I don't know why we lost lights; all primary systems have about three levels of redundancy, and everything's housed in the center of the station. Circuits might have overloaded; they should be back on soon.” Delenn nodded, went back to her candles, gracefully sat before them. Meditating, he guessed. “You’re going to stay here?” he asked, needing to confirm that before he left.

 

“I have no desire to be pulled out through a hole in the hull, John. Please just come over here and sit with me.”

 

“I can’t.”

 

“Then please be careful,” she said, and Sheridan fought a fleeting urge to ask her for a good-luck kiss.

 

“Aye-aye, sir,” he said instead, and headed for the door. And nearly walked right into it. “What the hell? Open.” He waved his hand in front of it, then tried to open it manually using the toggle on the instrument panel by the Babcom. "Oh, give me a break." Sheridan paced back and forth in front of the door, hating being stuck, hating not knowing what was happening out there. Something strange was going on; he might have temporarily reassured Delenn, but he hadn't reassured himself. All necessary systems were kept well away from the outside of the station so something like a hull breach could be managed without sacrificing overall station integrity. He couldn't think of any reason why they would have lost lights, station communications, and apparently the ability to open the hatches, but not heating and rotation and air.

 

He sat down heavily on Delenn's little couch, thinking. "It seems the station agrees with me," Delenn said, not even glancing his way, her gaze still on her candles. "It's best to stay here." He wanted to glare at her, just a little bit, but she was probably right. Still...

 

"We could probably get this door to open manually," he said, trying to figure out where the mechanism would be. Between the walls, to the left of the door. There had to be an access panel. He stood, shoved aside the couch he'd just been sitting on. Yep, there it was. He knelt, looked at the corners. "Delenn, do you have any tools? A screwdriver?" Even as he asked, he knew she wouldn't have anything like that. She came over and crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder to brace herself. She examined the screws, then went over to her kitchenette. 

 

Delenn returned with one of the little forks he had used when he'd joined her for that (incredibly long) ceremonial meal. Sheridan fiddled with it a little bit, turning the ends this way and that, and found that if he put one prong in at an angle, he could get the screw to turn.

 

"This is going to take forever," he said, sighing. Then Delenn took her own little fork, went to the other side of the panel, and started on the top screw.

 

"I think I will be able to finish before you," she said, that half-smile on her face. 

 

"Is that a challenge?"

 

"No, only a statement of fact. You're too easily distracted. I will probably finish both before you have finished one." Oh, she was good. But there was no way in hell he'd let her win. The game was on.

 

***

 

_0615 hours_

 

The being who allowed others to call it Kosh moved through the corridors of Babylon 5. Corridors. Paths from one potentiality to another. Humans, Narn, Centauri, Minbari, Drazi, Brakiri, dozens of others; they walked through the corridors, in easily predicted patterns, like drops of water along an incline, molecules of gas in an enclosed environment. Individual flickering lights of consciousness, each walking its own path, each trammeled in by only having so many paths to walk. 

 

The station was its own flickering light of consciousness. Atoms in a body; people in Babylon 5. Kosh was part of that consciousness. Looked out through the station's sensors, listened to the quiet hum of the universe, tasted the photons captured by the solar arrays, allowed itself to be held by the centrifugal force generated by the station's rotation.

 

Kosh knew they were coming the instant the ship came out of the jump gate. The bloody ones. They had hidden their ship inside another ship, but there were signs, clues. Unnoticed indicators. Kosh knew what would happen. They would dock, and everything would be in order. Puppets would enter the station. The puppets already knew where to go, what to do; the broken ones did not move anywhere without knowing to where they were moving. The puppets would herd everyone like beasts into pens, keep them there so the angry ones could sample as they chose. Some would survive. Most would not. 

 

Kosh could inform the humans in command of Babylon 5. It would be easy. They had plenty of time to fire on the ship, and the banished ones would be destroyed. Not all of them, of course. All would never be destroyed. But these, they could be dealt with.

 

Kosh thought, in the space of time between two hydrogen atoms colliding inside Epsilon, and in the moment they became helium, and a new burst of energy sprang forth into existence, Kosh made its decision.

 

Kosh had brought an Inquisitor to the station. It was important that the two be tested. It was necessary to know whether they were ready, whether they were the right people. If they were not, Kosh would find others. The Inquisitor had reported that they had passed the test, but Kosh was not sure. They had formed a personal bond, and Kosh feared that the bond invalidated the results of the test. 

 

That was not all. There were others on board this station who would come to prominence in the war to come, who would be required to stand and fight with the same willingness to sacrifice themselves for the cause. They had not been tested.

 

The miserable ones would make a good test. Far better than the Inquisitor. They would test many important attributes, most of which the lesser races lacked; intelligence, courage, creativity. If the people on board this station could not pass the test administered by the injured ones, then they were not the right people for the coming war. They would need to be replaced. It was better to know now.

 

Kosh would not inform the humans who ran the station. The ship would be allowed to dock. There would be a test.

  


Let the butchers come.

 


	2. Nuts and Bolts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set early Season Three, spoilers through "Points of Departure." Standard disclaimers apply.

II: Nuts and Bolts

 

_8 February 2260_

 

_1130 hours_

 

When the click finally came, barely audible through the bulkheads, Ivanova laid her head against the bundle of wires and sent thanks up to God. Almost two hours wriggling through the tiny space between the walls, doing her best to see by the dim light of the Babcom. Almost two hours trying to work out the connection to the hatch, trying to figure out the manual release.

 

There was one brief moment of panic, when Ivanova started backing up, and her shoulders got caught between one side of the wall and the metal box housing the circuitry for her quarters. She stopped, breathed, took the panic bubbling up and shoved it back down. _You are not going to get stuck between the walls and die. This is not how Susan Ivanova will meet her end._ She crawled forward a few inches, then backed up again, rotating her shoulders as she did so, and managed to squeeze through with a hairsbreadth to spare.

 

One last shimmy, twisting at the waist, and she was out. Ivanova stretched out on her back, breathed in fresh air, let the sweat evaporate off her face. Then she grabbed her spare PPG, tucked her tool kit back into her jacket, all three pocket knives - including the one that had belonged to her brother, that she had never used. One knife in each pocket, the third in a shoe. What else might she need? She couldn’t think of a thing, though she was sure there was something obvious she was missing.

 

Ivanova got ready to leave, unable to shake the feeling she was walking into a firefight. She’d had plenty of time to think while trying to get her hatch opened, and she couldn’t help but feel that something was behind what systems had failed, and which ones still functioned. It couldn’t just be random chance. Everyone had just enough to time to get into their quarters or another space that had a secure hatch; then the lights and comm went out, and the hatches sealed. 

 

It was though everyone had been sorted away, then kept for later. Ivanova didn’t like the way the hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the thought.

 

She pushed her door up just enough to slide underneath, peeked up and down the corridor. Deserted, lit by the dim emergency panels set every few meters. No sign of a hull breach. It was unbearably creepy, and Ivanova held her PPG out in front of her, headed toward Command and Control. It was as good a place as any to start.

 

***

 

_1100 hours_

 

Sheridan finally got the last screw to loosen, and untwisted the rest of it with his fingers. Delenn had finished removing the two screws on her side of the access panel at least five minutes ago, and had thankfully retreated into her bedroom, didn’t sit and watch him continue to struggle. He was still a tiny bit ticked that she had managed to beat him.

 

Sheridan pulled the panel off, set it aside. Stuck his head in and looked around. His eyes had adjusted a long time ago to the candlelight that illuminated Delenn’s quarters, but there wasn’t enough to see by between the walls. He stood, retrieved a candle, and brought it back.

 

“I see you finally finished,” Delenn said, coming up behind him.

 

“Now don’t be a sore winner.” Goddamn, but this space was small. He could barely squeeze his shoulders in, just managed to twist enough to look around, toward the door. The release and lock mechanism had to be on the other side of this big metal box, close to the hatch. Of course. "Okay, hold this." He handed Delenn the candle, and then it was five interminable minutes trying to wedge himself in at a right angle. He finally managed it, only to find himself completely blocked by the metal box. If he ripped off one of his arms, he might be able to squeeze through.

 

"Son of a bitch!" Sheridan pulled himself back out, claustrophobia mounting, and finally collapsed on the floor. At some point during this process, Delenn had wet a cloth, and she laid it on his forehead. "Thank you," he said distantly, worrying about what the hell he was going to do now. Rested a minute, then sat up. 

 

"Now you hold this." Delenn handed him the candle, and before he could even draw in a breath to protest, she slithered into the hole in the wall, turning and making her way easily to the right.

 

"Show off."

 

"Pass me the candle," she said, and he did. A few moments, then: "All right. There is a bundle of wires here, running up alongside the door. I can see some kind of apparatus near the top. That must be the system that opens and closes the door?"

 

"Sounds right."

 

"So what do I do?" Good question. Sheridan didn't have the foggiest idea how the hatch mechanism worked; his plan had been to fiddle with shit until something happened.

 

"Um, are the wires different colors?"

 

"Yes," she said. "One blue, two green, one red, two yellow, one black. No, two black." Eight different wires, five categories. Lock, automatic sensor, power, magnetic seal, and the connection to the call box and card key slot outside. Which two would need only one wire?

 

"John?"

 

"Cut the red and the blue." He handed her his pocket knife, waited. 

 

"All right." He didn't expect that anything immediately apparent would happen, but hoped the lock had been disconnected. The other wire was probably the auto sensor. That left the call box, power, and the mag seal. The mag seal was what they wanted.

 

"Okay, Delenn? Cut one each of the other three colors. One yellow, one green, one black. Then strip the wires back about half an inch."

 

"So that the wire is exposed?"

 

"Yeah." Sheridan sat back and waited. He had no idea whether or not this would work. It was possible that it would turn out to screw up the hatch so much they'd be stuck here for the duration of what was going on, and need to be cut out.

 

"The wires are exposed." He had a feeling that the yellow was the call box. He didn't know why, but he'd learned a long time ago to trust his instincts.

 

"Wrap the green and the black wires together." Send some juice into the mag seal circuit, see what happened.

 

_Click._

 

Sheridan stood, checked out the hatch. Damn, and the first try, too. He wondered if Susan had managed to figure it out, as well. If not, he would crow about it for weeks. He helped Delenn out, and she was looking at him oddly.

 

"What?" he asked, and he dusted her off a bit as they stood.

 

"You're enjoying yourself." And Sheridan realized that he did, in fact, have a big ol' smile on his face.

 

"Well, sure. It was fun. Like a puzzle." He got a different look now, one of his favorite looks, the one that said that she found him a little strange and a little funny, but she'd keep him anyway. "Okay," he said. "Now I can get out, but I don't like leaving you in a room that doesn't lock. I suppose if you heard something coming, you could shimmy between the walls again, pull the access panel up against the hole. At least until you were sure it was a friendly."

 

"You want me to hide between the walls, while you go out and run around by yourself?" He didn't like the tone of her voice, the tone that said pretty soon it wouldn't matter what he said, she was going to tell him how it was going to be and that would be that. Sheridan pulled out his PPG, checked the charge.

 

"I won't be alone."

 

"Indeed." Delenn went back into her bedroom then, and returned a few moments later holding what looked like an oversized napkin ring. "Let's go."

 

"Delenn," he protested, "I have no idea what's going on out there."

 

"All the more reason I should be with you."

 

"I don't want you to get hurt."

 

"Then don't do anything ill-advised that would require me to rescue you." With that she stepped around him and lifted the door. Sheridan ducked under, held it for her, and the two of them set out.

 

***

 

_1130 hours_

 

Takir had watched in disbelief as the casino cleared out when the hull breach alarm sounded. They were right on one of the central corridors. There were probably a dozen hatches between the casino and the hull. But everyone was running like a fire had just broken out. Takir moved with the crowd, then ducked under one of the roulette tables, waited - it wasn't long before he was the only one left.

 

And then he had made a little money.

 

Now Takir was making one last circuit of the place, forty thousand credits stuffed in his pockets and in the briefcase he'd found on the floor - real Earth leather, probably worth four or five thousand credits alone. Not a soul to be seen the whole time; no gamblers and no station personnel, and certainly no security. Even the lights going out hadn't dampened his spirits; the emergency lights had come on soon afterward, and that was more than enough light to see by. The whole thing was like a dream come true.

 

Takir made his way to the access stair, not even bothering with the transport tube; if the lights were out, then it probably wasn't working. He kept reaching down with his free hand to pat the money in his pocket, confirm that it was still there.

 

Someone was coming up the stairs behind him. Another enterprising soul? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Takir didn't feel like explaining himself, and he certainly didn't feel like sharing. He started to jog up the stairs, and just as he was thinking that he'd been hearing things, that no one was following him at all, it came at him from behind, claws and teeth tearing.

 

Takir never even saw what it was.

 

***

 

_1200 hours_

 

Ivanova didn't like it. She didn't like any of it. She hadn't passed a single person since leaving her quarters, and even though she knew her way around Babylon 5 like the back of her hand, something about the endless empty corridors made her feel like she was lost, or caught in some kind of dream. 

 

C and C had been locked up tight as a drum. Sheridan had been heading to a Council meeting so she didn't even bother with his office. Now she was making her way to security, hoping that she could find Garibaldi. _Someone_ had to have stayed out in the open. The idea that all two hundred and fifty thousand people on board this station had actually followed directions was too absurd to be believed.

 

Ivanova smelled the blood before she saw it. Turning around a bend in the corridor, there was an opened hatch fifty meters away from her. The call box beside it had been destroyed, a jumble of broken metal and plastic hanging loosely by one wire. The door itself was crumpled at the bottom. Ivanova found herself looking at these things rather than the puddle of blood and flesh in the middle of the corridor that at one point had been a person.

 

She gingerly approached. It was hard to tell by the red light of the emergency panels, but she thought she could make out an EarthForce uniform. The arms and legs were gone - ripped, not cut off. The face was mutilated beyond recognition. Based on the size and shape of the torso, Ivanova thought it was a woman.

 

She looked back at the door. The crumples in the metal formed an upside-down V at the bottom. It looked as though something had been put between the door and the floor, and levered it up by force. Ivanova slipped underneath, into the dark quarters. There was just enough light from the hall to find a t-shirt on the back of the couch. She grabbed it, came back out, and gently laid it on top of the woman's ruined face.

 

***

 

_1215 hours_

 

It hadn't occurred to Sheridan that the transport tubes wouldn't be working, either. Thankfully the closest one wasn't that far from Delenn's quarters, but they still had to backtrack to the nearest access stair, and Sheridan begrudged every second they had to spend out in the corridors.

 

There was an almost palpable sense of dread in the air, and walking these empty halls, lit only by bloody red light, was unnerving. He was glad of Delenn's presence beside him, kept glancing over at her. She might have seemed as calm as ever to an outside observer, but Sheridan could see that she was worried, a little scared. She was clutching that napkin holder thing; he wondered if it was some kind of religious thing, a charm or something.

 

They made it to the stair, and inside a smaller space, no long halls stretching behind and ahead, Sheridan felt secure enough to sit and take a short break. He knew it was all in his head, but it felt like there just wasn't enough air.

 

"There's no hull breach, is there?" Sheridan just grunted. "What do you think is causing this?" she asked, sitting very close.

 

"I'm not thinking about it. I just want to get up to C and C. That's as far as I'm thinking."

 

"I'm worried about Lennier." Sheridan was sure that was true, but was also sure that Lennier, wherever he was right now, was far more worried about her.

 

"I'm sure he's fine." Sheridan stood, started up the steps. They'd have five floors to go, then down to C and C; it would be a good forty-five minutes before they got there. "Probably just meditating." They climbed the stairs in silence for awhile, and he could hear himself breathing a little harder. Too much sitting behind a desk lately. Delenn, of course, betrayed no sign of exertion at all. 

 

They found the body on the third floor up. 

 

"In Valen's name," she whispered, backing up against the wall. Sheridan made himself come close, lean down to look. It had been...shredded. There was no other word for it. He looked like he'd taken a swim in an industrial meat grinder. A Drazi, Sheridan thought, and a well-off one as well, if the credits scattered on the floor around him were any indication.

 

"Someone did this," he said, standing and going to Delenn.

 

"No, not someone. Something." He looked at her then. He had seen her after they opened the Markab's death chamber, he had seen her after her battle with the Inquisitor, but he had never seen her like this. She looked absolutely terrified, and it was that, and not the experiences of the morning, or even the body he had just examined, that made Sheridan start to become afraid for the first time.

 

"We need to get to C and C," Delenn said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up the next flight of stairs.

 

"Do you know what did that, Delenn?"

 

"We need to get somewhere safe. Hurry."

 

***

 

_1315 hours_

 

They'd already lost two patients. One more was critical, and unless the power and lights came back on within the next hour, they'd lose her, too. They’d probably lose her anyway, at this point. There were a few machines that ran on battery power, but most were hooked up to station power, and none of those were operational. The dim glow from the displays of the battery-powered machines, the emergency panels here and there, and Dr. Hobbs's book light that she had stuck in her front pocket facing out - that's all the light they had. It was enough to get by, especially now that everyone's eyes had adjusted, but the patients were scared, agitated, and each minute it just got worse.

 

Franklin was calm. It almost felt like he was standing outside himself, watching himself move around Medlab, see to one patient after another, continue to check the lights, the comm system, the computers, the doors. He didn't have enough time to worry; he didn't have enough energy to be afraid.

 

_Check on Na'Thar. See if we have any more Narn plasma. Distribute pain medication to the infirmary. The IV drip on the Drazi patient needs to be changed. Try to make a call to C and C. Change the bandage on Dr. Williams. Try to make a call on the link. Make sure Diana is comfortable. Prepare a dose of morphine, just in case. Try and see if the doors will open. Check how much water we have left._

 

So it was that when the woman first entered Medlab, the doors sliding closed behind her, Franklin hardly blinked at first. She stood there, just inside, staring at him.

 

"Are you all right? Do you need medical assistance?" No response. Then Franklin gasped, understanding the implication of her sudden appearance. "How did you get the bulkhead to raise?" But even before Franklin finished asking the question, he got a good look at the Minbari woman's eyes. They were vacant, staring at him but also through him, at some infinite point in the distance. Franklin noticed that her robes were old, threadbare; her bone crest was carved into sharp, jagged peaks. 

 

"Can I help you?" And then she smiled at him. A smile that grew and grew, and Franklin felt the spit dry up in his mouth. It wasn't a smile, it wasn't a grin - it was a rictus, some kind of grotesque parody of a smile. The woman walked toward him, in slow, jerky steps. The grin never faded, her eyes still staring at him and yet through him. Franklin took a step back, then another, but then he was against the wall and still she advanced, inexorable.

 

Franklin suddenly realized that the woman wasn’t really a woman. That whatever stood in front of him was just a shell. That when he looked into those eyes, he was looking at something old, unfathomably old.

 

She had something in her hand that she held out to him. Grinning, grinning. Out of the corner of his eye, Franklin saw Hobbs walk up, staring at the two of them. He lifted one hand just enough to tell her to stop, and she did. Her hand stole out to the instrument tray nearby, and then Franklin wasn’t looking her way anymore, because the woman was only a meter away, and the thing in her hand was just in front of his face.

 

Franklin took it. He knew what it was made from the instant he held it in his hands, but he looked at it anyway. A piece of leather, with five letters carved into it. Not just leather, though. This had come from the skin of an arm, human, maybe, or Centauri. Franklin read the letters again; he knew he would see this word, carved into once living flesh, for the rest of his life. 

 

_BLOOD_

 

The thing that had once been a woman laughed then, a chuff of air that reeked of rotten flesh. It held out its hand, and Franklin tried to hand back the piece of leather, but it didn’t take it. Just held its hand out, waiting.

 

It wanted blood.

 

Franklin put his hand in his pocket, got a good grip on the syringe there. The dose of morphine he’d prepared for Diana. Then he nodded, nice and slow. “Sure, we can get you some blood. Any preference as to species?”

 

The thing’s smile died then, and Franklin knew real fear. If it had been looking through him earlier, now it was staring down into the very depths of his soul. 

 

“Why don’t you come to the back with us?” Hobbs asked, and Franklin wanted to yell at her to run away, run and hide, hope this thing didn’t turn its basilisk glare her way. Then he got a look at her face, saw that it was deathly pale, and saw what she was holding almost hidden in the folds of her scrubs.

 

A scalpel.

 

“Yeah, come on back,” he said, fighting against the shake in his voice. “You can pick out what blood you want.” The thing looked back and forth between them, and Franklin gestured for it to walk ahead of him. He managed a watery smile himself, and it seemed that did the trick, because it turned, walked toward Hobbs.

 

Franklin knew he’d have one shot. He slid the syringe out as steadily as he could, then came up behind the thing and jabbed it into its neck. It howled, an unearthly sound, and Franklin grabbed it, pinned its arms to its body. For a moment he didn’t think he’d be able to hold on - it bucked and shook, and it was so strong - but then the morphine hit the bloodstream. Franklin took one hand and grabbed its bone crest, pulled the thing’s head back, and exposed its throat.

 

“Lillian, now!” There was only an instant of hesitation, and then Hobbs came forward with her scalpel, sliced. Franklin felt a gush of blood run down the creature, cover his hand. A spray of it hit Hobbs in the face, and she cried out, recoiled. Franklin kept holding onto the thing until it finally became limp. He put it on the floor, and watched it die. Just before the end, those eyes focused on him, on his own eyes, and he saw a brief glimpse of something then. He thought it looked like gratitude, and relief. She whispered a word, and then her eyes dimmed.

 

Franklin sat down, right on the floor. Ignored the doctors, nurses, and patients who came over to see what was going on. The word the woman had said repeated over and over again in his head, and he wondered what it meant. He was afraid he’d learn before this was all over.

 

“Carnifex.” 


	3. Campfire Tales

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set early Season Three, spoilers through "Points of Departure." Standard disclaimers apply.

Campfire Tales

 

_8 February 2260_

 

_1230 hours_

 

There was an open hatch just in front of them. Something had broken the bottom of the door. Sheridan and Delenn stood there, just looking at it. They had made it halfway to C and C, passing closed door after closed door, walking through empty corridors, and now this. Something had opened this door by force.

 

"I'm just going to peek inside," Sheridan whispered, unable to keep from feeling embarrassed by how afraid he felt. He was ten years old again, trying to work up the nerve to walk down the hallway at night, past the open door of the bathroom, knowing that there was something waiting for him inside. He forced himself to duck under the half-open door, and he only needed one look to confirm his suspicions. He stepped back out.

 

"Another dead body." Then Delenn shocked him by brushing past him to enter. He followed her in, baffled. She circled the body slowly, then pulled the sheet off the nearby bed and covered it. "Delenn, we need to get going."

 

"I will tell you what is on this station. Here, let's move away from the door."

 

"You want to talk here?"

 

"It's already been here, John. It will not return." She sat down on the floor in the corner, the couch between her and the door. To see her, you'd have to walk at least a couple paces into the room. Sheridan joined her, finding it hard to rest. There was so much adrenaline in his system at this point, his muscles felt jangly, on fire.

 

“So you know what did this?”

 

“I think so,” Delenn said, her voice low, turning her napkin ring over and over in her hands. “I have only heard stories, the kind one tells late at night, in the hopes of frightening others.”

 

“Minbari tell scary stories,” Sheridan said, amused. He wondered if she’d intentionally put it that way in the hopes of relieving the tension some. He wouldn’t put it past her.

 

“The stories say that long ago, when the First Ones came into being, there was a race that struggled to maintain the same levels of technology as the others. They were consumed with jealousy, with wrath. They could have made compromises, shared the resources of their system, bartered, traded - but they refused. They attacked the other races, not in open war, but secretly, quietly. They learned how to make the attacked blame each other. They learned how to slip in to any ship, any station, any planet, and take what they needed without anyone ever knowing.

 

“But as the centuries and then millennia wore away, they no longer cared for military secrets, or weapons, or money. They began to infiltrate and terrorize and kill for no reason at all. The First Ones finally came to recognize the monster in their midst, and banished them. By then, however, they did not care. They had no use for the light of suns, for the feel of a planet beneath their feet. All they wanted was death and ruin.

 

“Now they live in the dead spaces between the stars. We call them Carnifex. Butchers. Valen named them; there was no word in any of our tongues before him that could describe them. To the Centauri, they are The Bloody Ones. They strike without warning, leaving a ship filled with dead bodies as the only evidence they ever ventured forth. This is their only purpose now - to kill, to torture, to mutilate. To bathe in blood. And now they are here, on this station.”

 

Silence. Sheridan stared at his hands, and felt the weight of responsibility crush him. Two hundred and fifty thousand people on Babylon 5, locked up, waiting to be killed. He had to do something, but he couldn’t even begin to guess what his next move would be. He had nothing but a PPG and a pocket knife. How was he going to win back the station? 

 

Footsteps, in the distance.

 

Sheridan stood, feeling something strong gather inside him. One of them was coming, and he would kill it before it killed anyone else. He could do this. He would do this. He slipped toward the door, listened. The footsteps came from down the corridor, around the turn. Coming this way.

 

He felt Delenn’s hand on his back, distantly. He shook his head, knowing she would see the movement silhouetted against the emergency lights. Sheridan slipped out, silent, and moved to the opposite wall. Put his back to it, moved toward the intersection. It was coming, and he would wait, and when it turned the corner he would shoot it dead.

 

It stopped. Just before turning the corner. He couldn’t hear a thing, but he could sense a presence, no more than two meters away. Sheridan felt a single drop of sweat make its way down the side of his face. Hyper aware, arms tense in front of him, PPG steady as a rock. He inched forward - was it trying to draw him out? He could move toward the opposite wall, get the angle he needed, but he would lose his cover. Every thought, every consideration of strategy, flashed through his mind in fractions of seconds. 

 

He would move on the count of three. One. Two.

 

It came around the corner, and even as Sheridan’s finger began to squeeze the trigger, he saw that it was Ivanova, her own PPG aimed right at him, her eyes wide. They both froze for a second, and then he had her crushed in a bear hug, never so happy to see someone in his life. 

 

“You okay? Susan, you okay?” She was nodding hard, her hands bunched in his jacket. He pulled her with him back to the open room.

 

xxx

 

_1300 hours_

 

Lennier had prepared first. He had changed into simpler garments - freer, less restrictive of movement. He had eaten a light meal, drinking plenty of water. He cleared his quarters of obstructions. He emptied his bladder and his bowels. He found his denn’bok, placed it nearby as he arranged himself on the floor, in the corner of the room.

 

After some time spent in the dark, the communication system dead, the hatch inoperative, Lennier came to the conclusion that it was likely that other systems would fail soon. It would be best to conserve his air. So he prepared, and then he entered a deep meditative state. He let his heart rate fall, his breathing slow. There was nothing he could do but wait, and if the worst came to pass, the amount of air in his quarters would last a reasonably long time.

 

Before his thoughts turned inward, Lennier hoped that Delenn was safe.

 

Hours ticked by, and he did not move. He melted into the darkness of the room.

 

Lennier had not set any alarm to rouse himself, and had not given himself a prompt to come immediately out of the meditative state should any external stimulus present itself. So when the door to his quarters was wrenched open, Lennier remained where he was, only very slowly cycling back up to full consciousness.

 

A Carnifex entered.

 

xxx

 

_1315 hours_

 

It was hard to believe now, hands bound behind her back, marched by some kind of demon toward Brown Sector, but this morning had been the best morning of her life. It had earned that distinction by following the best night of her life. Julius had finally proposed. It would be at least a year, probably two, before they'd be able to actually go through with the ceremony, but just knowing that they were promised to each other had been enough for Laetitia.

 

She already had a husband back on Mars, of course, picked out for her by the Corps because of their genetic compatibility. A child she had never seen, hadn't named, didn't care about. She knew Julius would prefer a real ceremony (she didn't even have to read his mind to know that; he was definitely the more emotional of the two), but a spiritual joining on Proxima Three would be good enough. More than Laetitia could have hoped for.

 

They'd been on their way to grab something to eat when the alarm sounded. They ran, but it seemed every door they came to had just been closed. By the time they made it back to their own quarters they couldn't get in. Julius kept trying to reassure her that the hull breach was nowhere close, that they should just find a quiet corner and wait, try to stay out of the crew's way. They found their corner, but it wasn't quiet; Laetitia's mind could hear drums pounding in dark places; nasty, slithering sounds up and down the walls. She was only a P3, nothing, really, but she felt like she was on Dust - everything was open to her, everything was pouring into her, she couldn't stop it. When the killings started, it was all she could do to not rip at her own face, and Julius had had to hold her tight. 

 

She had known the thing was coming long before it ever reached them, and she had tried to run, pulling Julius along with her, but she was already so exhausted. The monster hadn't been alone; there was a Minbari with him, as cruel as any nightmare she'd had when she'd been a child during the war. The Minbari had entered her mind, held her fast, and made her watch as the monster had torn Julius to shreds.

 

They had reached their destination. The Minbari pushed her into a room. There was another teep in there; their minds said 'hello' as soon as they saw each other, even though she didn't recognize the Centauri man and was certainly in no mood to chat.

 

"What's going on?" Laetitia asked again, as she had asked and asked the entire walk here. She expected nothing but silence, but this time the Minbari answered her. The coldness in his voice was dreadful to hear, and Laetitia thought for the first time that day about how she might kill herself. It would not be the last.

 

"All in good time." He closed the door as he left them, and Laetitia dug her nails into her palms. She would not cry. She was afraid that if she started, she would never stop.

 

"Are you hurt?" the Centauri asked, and Laetitia went over and sat by him on the floor. She looked around the room - some kind of monitoring station for the water reclamation system. The chairs had been removed, and the desks, but the monitors were still in the wall, and they were all still active. The Centauri touched her mind, a gentle brush, the equivalent of a hand on her shoulder. "Are you hurt?"

 

"I'm fine. My fiancé is dead."

 

"So is my daughter."

 

"I'm Laetitia."

 

"Corfo."

 

Corfo put his arm around her, and they held hands. Normally this would be too much for a telepath, that much physical contact with another, but it was good. It made them strong. They built three sets of walls around themselves, nice and high, and filled the space in the middle with beautiful things - flowers and birds and songs. They walked through their garden, and waited.

 

xxx

 

_1330 hours_

 

Ivanova was kneeling beside the body, the sheet pulled back. She shook her head, covered him back up, and joined Sheridan and Delenn in the corner.

 

“I knew him. Station maintenance. His name was Jay; he was a nice guy. Very prompt.” Sheridan slung an arm around Ivanova’s shoulders, the other arm around Delenn’s waist. He rested his head back against the wall, and gave his mind a few moments of rest from the endless churning of options and plans that had been running through it non-stop. Just thirty seconds off, holding his girls, thinking about nothing. He'd already filled Ivanova in on what Delenn had told him about the things in control of the station; he pitied the first one of them she ran into after seeing the look on her face. “So you two weren’t trapped behind a hatch?” Ivanova asked, draining a glass of water.

 

“No, we were,” Delenn answered. “I climbed inside the wall, and the Captain directed me to cut certain wires and put them together.”

 

“Hooked the power into the mag seal,” Sheridan said, wondering if they could get up into the ductwork, just crawl all the way down to Grey Sector. “Is that what you did?”

 

A pause. “Yes. That is exactly what I did.” Sheridan felt a smile on his face, hugged her close for a second.

 

“Come on. What did you do?”

 

“What you did. That’s what I did.”

 

“Ivanova...”

 

She sighed then. “I didn’t have enough light to see much more than the outlines of things. So I crawled all the way back to the hatch, then up to the mechanism at the top of the door. It took...a really long time to get the cover off. I dropped the screwdriver once.”

 

“Hey, at least you had a screwdriver.”

 

“Then I just had to find the manual mag release. Up on my tiptoes, hands over my head, doing everything by feel. I have to admit, the only thing that got me through it was the mental image of you trying to shove that big Midwestern corn-fed body of yours in between the walls.” Sheridan chuckled, and then he knew it was time to go.

 

"We could get up into the ducts," he said, standing, giving Delenn a hand up. "Crawl down to Grey Sector."

 

"That's at least a mile."

 

"You have a better idea?"

 

"I was heading down to security," Ivanova said, checking Jay's closet. "I wanted to find Garibaldi."

 

"We stopped by security on our way here. Tapped some morse code out on the door, nothing. He must have been out on his feet when the balloon went up."

 

"Damn. Hope he made it in someplace safe. Oh, here's a flashlight. That'll be good to have. I wonder why Jay didn't get it out."

 

"He probably forgot," Delenn said. "I imagine many people are quite frightened, too frightened to think clearly."

 

"Well, I don't intend to keep it that way," Sheridan said. "I want to get up to Blue Eight. Let's go." The three of them walked out, back into the dark.

 

xxx

 

_1345 hours_

 

They'd taken the Minbari woman's body into the isolab, and Franklin performed as much of an autopsy as he could with the instruments he had available. He hadn't learned much - she was malnourished, covered with bruises, cuts, most of which looked old and faded. Internally everything looked pretty much normal. Whatever had been controlling her - and Franklin was sure that there had been some outside influence, that at the last moment of her life he had finally seen the real her - it had left no visible trace that he could see.

 

Diana had died half an hour before, mercifully slipping into unconsciousness at the end. They were out of Narn plasma; most of it was down in Medlab Three in Green Sector. Franklin was afraid that they'd lose Na'Thar soon, as well.

 

There were enough ambulatory patients in good enough health that they'd been able to post at least two by every entrance, though; five by the emergency bulkhead that had dropped in the main corridor to seal off all of Medlab One. If someone else slipped through, Franklin hoped they'd be able to keep the door open, get back into contact with the rest of the station.

 

"What battery-powered machines do we have that aren't being used right now?" he asked Hobbs, coming back from her rounds.

 

"They're all being used."

 

"Any not vitally necessary?"

 

"What are you wanting to do?"

 

"Daisy chain the batteries to the computer. I want to look something up." Hobbs looked at him then, as though he were crazy. "She said a word, just before she died. 'Carnifex.' I've never heard of it before.

 

"It's Latin. It means 'executioner,' 'butcher.' That's what they called Pompey the Great." Now Franklin was even more confused. Why would a Minbari have said something in Latin just before she died? Most Minbari struggled with English. Hobbs laid a gentle hand on his arm. "Dr. Franklin, we have enough to worry about right now. We need to concentrate on keeping what patients we have alive.

 

She was right. But Franklin had the feeling that ignorance about what was going on out there was the worst possible thing right now. "I know. Still, next time you go around, look and see if there's anything we can unhook and use, as long as its removal won't put anyone in immediate risk." She wasn't happy about it, but she nodded.

 

Executioner. At least one of them on this station, and it had somehow gotten access to their systems, locked everyone up. And it wanted blood. Franklin crept back to his office, slipped a stim from his desk drawer into his pocket. He wasn't going to use it. He just wanted to know it was there. Just in case.

 

xxx

 

_1400 hours_

 

Blue Eight. Just as deserted as Blue Seven, Six and Five. From here a duct went straight across the station to Grey Eight, where the main power grid was housed. Ivanova was unscrewing a vent, Sheridan and Delenn on either side, watching the corridors coming and going.

 

"One more," Ivanova whispered, and Sheridan hated being out in the open, felt completely exposed. He had never thought he would look forward to crawling around in some air ducts, but he was practically itching to get in. They'd be much faster just walking down, but he didn't think they'd make it. The Carnifex ( _Carnifexes? Carnifexi? He'd have to ask Delenn some time_.) wouldn't want anyone to have the opportunity to wrest control of the station back, so he was sure the open routes would be well-guarded.

 

"We're in," Ivanova said, and climbed inside. Sheridan gestured for Delenn to go in next. She unsnapped the top of her dress, and then she was reaching right down the front of it, stowing her napkin ring down in her cleavage. Sheridan felt heat rise to his face, and looked at the floor.

 

“You were married, correct?” she asked, snapping her dress back up, and he nodded, confused. “Then it’s reasonably certain you’ve seen a woman's breast before.” And with that, she climbed into the wall, leaving him nonplussed. He took up the rear, pulling the vent back up into the hole; they had to leave it unscrewed, but as long as no one examined it too closely there should be no sign they'd entered here. He followed Delenn into the darkness. It wasn't as tight in here as he'd feared; there was barely enough room to hunch over and crab walk, though that would be hell on his back after awhile. It wouldn't be long before they were crawling. He felt bad for Delenn, trying to move in that dress of hers.

 

Then they were on their way. It was pitch black again, only hints of light as they passed vents on their way; Ivanova wanted to save the flashlight till they needed it. Sheridan tried to keep track of distance, counting a meter every five steps, figuring his pace wasn't as long as it usually was. No sound but their breathing, the metal of the duct creaking occasionally. He wished they could talk to each other, keep their minds on something else, keep time from melting into something insubstantial and untethered, but he wasn't sure how far the sound would travel, if they’d be heard in the corridors. It wasn’t worth the risk.

 

He lost count of his steps. Wondered what Delenn was thinking about. He was thirsty. He banged his head on a low-hanging pipe, bit back a curse. Then Sheridan practically crawled over Delenn, who had stopped. 

 

“What’s going on?”

 

“Shhh!” Ivanova, just ahead of Delenn. Sheridan shushed. Listened. There was something moving in the duct a level above them, about fifty meters ahead. The sound was barely there, just the slightest indication, almost subliminal, of movement. Before Sheridan could say a thing, Ivanova was knocking on the top of the duct. Morse code.

 

“H-E-L-L-O”

 

They waited, utter silence. Then, more of that shuffling sound, a bit louder, coming their way. Knocks.

 

“I-D” Sheridan could sense Ivanova looking back his way even if he couldn’t see it. He knocked on the duct himself.

 

“O-L-Y-M-P-I-A-N-S R-U-L-E”

 

Whoever was above them was hurrying back their way. Then almost above them, quick knocks.

 

“J-O-H-N I-S T-H-A-T Y-O-U”

 

Sheridan grinned in the dark. He didn’t know where he’d been, if he’d been caught somewhere, and if so, how he’d gotten out, but he’d had the exact same idea that they’d had. Garibaldi was also on his way to Grey Sector.

 

xxx

 

_1315 hours_

 

The Carnifex extended its senses, listening for blood, feeling for blood, smelling for blood. It had feasted once already, a crunchy thing with thick skin. Now it would feast again, and after, it would continue to feast, until the station ran red. It had waited a long time for this, and would not leave until he had sucked the place dry.

 

The room was empty. It had come across an empty room earlier, the door already opened. It did not understand. The puppets had sealed the doors. No, this room was not empty. There was something in the corner. The Carnifex approached, claws clicking. Something, yes. A bony one. But it was dead. It did not hear the bony one’s breathing. Cold, blood not pumping strong and thick. It did not move, even as the Carnifex stood directly above it.

 

It did not look as though it had been feasted upon. The Carnifex thought about sucking the marrow from its bones, but there was no reason to waste time here. There were many other treasures aboard. No end to warm, hot blood. The Carnifex would move on, and leave this dead, cold bony one for another.

 

xxx

 

_1500 hours_

 

They’d only liberated three machines; the rest couldn’t be unhooked without risking the patients using them. A Brakiri in the infirmary named Leshke had volunteered to string the batteries together, and had done so with astonishing efficiency. Franklin had invited her to take a look at the Babcom; she was over there now, poking around in the wires underneath.

 

Franklin booted the computer up, running it in text-only mode. He didn’t know how long the battery power would last. He looked up ‘Carnifex.” Like Hobbs had said - an entry on Pompey the Great.

 

“Cross-reference with Minbari.” Nothing. “Look up ‘executioner,” cross-reference with 'Minbari.'” Nothing. “Look up ‘butcher,’ cross-reference with 'Minbari.'” A single entry came up, only three lines. Franklin read them half a dozen times before he grabbed pen and paper to copy them down, then read them half a dozen times more.

 

_The Minbari tell a fable about a dark race of butchers who live in the dead of space. They sneak into civilized places to hunt and kill. A cautionary story for children._

 

xxx

 

_1600 hours_

 

Neither Garibaldi nor Sheridan’s team had given any thought as to how they were going to get out of the ducts. Ivanova was still sitting behind the vent that stood between them and Grey Sector, trying to figure out how to unscrew it from the inside. Garibaldi was tapping from above.

 

“S-E-E A-N-Y-O-N-E E-L-S-E”

 

“N-O”

 

“W-H-A-T I-S I-T”

 

“S-O-M-E-T-H-I-N-G B-A-D”

 

“Fuck!” Ivanova whispered, and there was just enough light coming through the slats in the vent that Sheridan could see her sit back in disgust. “I don’t know how we’re going to get out. I can’t get my wrist to bend enough. We might have to backtrack.”

 

“No way. We’ve already been two hours getting here; I do not want to lose another two hours going back.”

 

“Captain, if you’ve got a better idea, please, I’m all ears.”

 

“Commander.” Delenn’s voice. Ivanova moved aside, and Delenn ran her hands over the inside of the access panel.

 

“What are you doing?” Sheridan asked, half expecting her to do a spell or something, the way she was touching the metal, looking at it intently.

 

“Both of you, please move back.” Then she was pulling her napkin ring out of her dress, putting it right next to the corner. A beat. Wham! There was a flash of something, and where Delenn had been holding a small cylinder of metal before, now she had a seven foot long pike in her hands. One end buried itself in the opposite side of the duct. The other punched the corner of the access panel out, ripped it clean from the wall. Delenn seemed not to move at all, and it was the napkin ring again. She repositioned it on the bottom corner, turned it into a pike again. 

 

“See if you can push it out now.” Sheridan gave her the once-over as he moved close, then pushed out the freed side of the access panel. He was able to bend it enough for the three of them to squeeze out.

 

“I’m afraid that if there’s anything close by, it heard that,” Ivanova said, her PPG out, covering one end of the corridor.

 

“I think you’re right.” Sheridan helped Delenn out, still looking at her. “You mean to tell me that _that’s_ what you’ve been carrying around this whole time?”

 

“It is a denn’bok. A Minbari fighting pike.” Sheridan just shook his head. She never failed to amaze him. Then he leaned just into the duct, knocking one last time.

 

“S-T-A-Y P-U-T W-E-R-E C-O-M-I-N-G T-O G-E-T Y-O-U”

 


	4. Into the Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set early Season Three, spoilers through "Points of Departure." Standard disclaimers apply.

Into the Fire

 

_1600 hours_

 

By the time Lennier had abandoned the meditative state and returned to full consciousness, his quarters were deserted, the hatch still open. He found it hard to piece together what had happened, a confused swirl of impressions and sense memories. A sickening reek still lingered in the air, and Lennier was dismayed by the strong feeling of urgency that gripped him. He felt it was imperative to get out of his quarters, get out and do something.

 

He didn't know what, though.

 

He decided that if nothing else, he would at least check on Delenn. Lennier took up his denn'bok, tested to make sure it was in proper working order, and departed.

 

xxx

 

_1700 hours_

 

They had climbed up through the manhole covers to Grey Nine, retrieved Garibaldi, and then made their way back down to Grey Six. Sheridan had planned to turn the lights back on, but decided that it was more important to restore station communications first.

 

On Grey Seven, they found a pile of maintenance personnel who had probably assembled to respond to the alleged hull breach. Nearly twenty bodies, ravaged beyond recognition.

 

"I don't understand, Delenn," Sheridan said, unable to look away from the carnage.

 

"It is not possible to understand. You might as well ask them to understand our art, music, culture."

 

"Let's move. Now." Ivanova already had the next manhole cover open, and they began to descend. He'd seen three PPGs among the bodies, looking as though they'd been discarded. No flash burns along the walls that he could see. How had twenty men and women been so thoroughly surprised and attacked, without even the opportunity to defend themselves? What were they walking into? Sheridan gathered the weapons, then down into the manhole. He felt like he was climbing down into hell. 

 

Grey Six. The corridors the same as every other, the sameness starting to wear at his mind. It seemed like they were running in circles. Ivanova took point, Garibaldi behind, then Delenn, and Sheridan took up the rear. They moved as quietly as possible, only a few hundred meters before they should reach the secondary communications relay. As long as the power supply hadn't been disconnected, he thought they had a good chance of getting at least the links working again. Then he could find out how many friendlies he had out there, try to coordinate some kind of response.

 

Ivanova stopped at a bend, fist raised. They slowly dropped, up against the wall, and she poked her head around the corner. Turned back, whispered into Garibaldi's ear, who whispered to Delenn, who finally relayed the message to Sheridan.

 

"A human woman and a Drazi male, side by side. Just in front of the hatch. Staring straight forward, like they're statues. Ten meters of open ground, no cover."

 

"Weapons?" The question made its way back down the line. Ivanova peeked around again, and down the answer came.

 

"Not that I can see." Well, at least the odds were in their favor. Sheridan rose, PPG charged and ready. He had to admit, he kind of wanted to see Delenn put her pike into action. Garibaldi was looking a question at him, and Sheridan shrugged: no plan, just run around the corner and start shooting.

 

As they made the turn, Sheridan was convinced for a long beat that the two figures guarding the communications relay were in fact statues; they didn't move, didn't seem to notice the four people coming toward them at all. Then the two were running their way, rage twisting their features. Ivanova had been wrong; they did have weapons. Hands held out in front of them, teeth bared. Even after they'd both been shot several times, they came, and the woman barreled into Ivanova, knocking her down. Ivanova struggled, her hands on the human's shoulders, trying to keep those clicking teeth away from her throat.

 

The Drazi made his way toward Sheridan and Garibaldi, an awful keening noise that went on and on coming out of his mouth. Sheridan shot one last time, and then it was on him, his PPG flying out of his hands. He tried to roll as he went down, protect his throat. He could feel claws tearing at the back of his neck, felt skin give way and hot blood run toward his face. Then the weight was gone, and Sheridan hadn't even realized that he wasn't breathing until he sucked in a big lungful of air. He rolled over, scrambling around for his PPG, looking for Ivanova.

 

Delenn came up past him, denn'bok swinging in a perfect arc, and slammed the human on top of Ivanova right in the temple, knocking her back. Her figure twitched, and Sheridan could see her skull had been cracked open. Garibaldi had a foot on the throat of the Drazi, and shot him between the eyes at point blank range.

 

The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds.

 

Delenn was helping him up, pulling back his collar to examine what felt like huge gashes covering his neck. "You're all right," she said, fingers brushing against his cheek. "Just a few shallow cuts." He gripped her shoulder briefly, and then followed the other two into the secondary relay room.

 

xxx

 

_1700 hours_

 

The Carnifex had come without warning, wrenching the emergency bulkhead up in a matter of seconds. The five so-called guards had fled immediately, running into Medlab, one of them screaming in such complete and utter terror that Franklin felt his blood run cold. With numb fingers he grabbed a scalpel and a bone saw and ran out into the main corridor, hoping it was another person seemingly under some kind of psychic hold even as he knew it was not.

 

What he saw was something out of a nightmare. Seven feet tall, hunched over, rippling muscles pocked by rotten skin and bulbous tumors. No eyes, the face almost entirely given to a monstrous mouth filled with three rows of razor sharp fangs. Franklin came to a dead stop, staring at the thing at the end of the corridor. It stood, black tongue lolling out of that abyss of a mouth, head turning this way and that. Then it was coming for him, and Franklin saw the shreds of flesh still hanging from its claws.

 

The scalpel and bone saw clattered to the floor. He couldn't move. He was paralyzed, from the top of his head down to his feet. He felt like he was being swallowed up by something immensely vast. Black wings fluttered at the edges of his vision. The thing lumbered toward him, slowly, almost majestic. And with one dim corner of his mind, Franklin realized his fingers had stolen down into his pocket, the scant weight of the stim in the palm of his hand.

 

With shaking fingers, he pulled the stim out of his pocket. The Carnifex was close, its tongue flicking out like a snake's. Franklin managed to raise the stim syringe in starts and stops, the shake getting worse and worse; it felt like he was trying to lift his hand against an enormous weight. He could feel the last of his willpower sapping away, his eyes drawn to that gaping maw, black blood ringing each fang. With one final, desperate burst of energy, Franklin stuck the syringe into the side of his own neck.

 

The cocktail of stimulants immediately flooded into his bloodstream. His vision cleared, became perfect, better than perfect; he could hear the Carnifex's breathing, whistling in and out; he could smell the hundred different aromas, all of them revolting, that surrounded the creature. All in the first second of absolute clarity. The fog lifted, the weight gone. Franklin turned and ran back into Medlab One.

 

"Leshke! Connect the battery chain to the defibrillator!” The scalpel and bone saw abandoned, Franklin frantically looked around, but no weapons presented themselves. The Carnifex was coming in after him, and he saw the few people who had remained scatter. Only the Brakiri remained, hooking up wires with apparent calm.

 

Franklin turned. The Carnifex stood just inside the doors, and Franklin could sense a malevolent energy coiling inside the thing, could feel that it was preparing to strike.

 

“What do you want?” he asked, not knowing where the question came from. The Carnifex stopped, and again Franklin felt that alien intelligence upon him, but this time he was able to shunt it aside, deflect the probing threads whispering calm and quiet and peace before they were able to sink into his mind. “Do you want blood? Because I can give you blood.”

 

It was definitely listening now, taking one tentative step forward. Franklin felt he could leap forward, throttle the thing to death with his bare hands, the same invincible power he always felt just after dosing himself, but he made himself smile, made himself put his hands out, non-threatening, palms forward.

 

“We have many different kinds of blood here. Many different races. All the blood you could ever want.” Leshke crept up behind him, the defibrillator paddles in her hands. Franklin took them, the hum of the machine sounding insanely loud in his ears. He approached the Carnifex, keeping his voice as measured and smooth as possible.

 

“And flesh. We have flesh here. Organs. Rich, meaty organs. And bodies in the morgue, still warm. I’ll make you up a banquet, spread a table, if you want. Anything you want.” Franklin closed the last few feet between them, and even as he brought his hands forward he recoiled from the overpowering stench, had to turn his face away from those glittering teeth. 

 

He could feel the thing trying to get inside his mind again, and suddenly the weight was all around him, and all he wanted was to drop everything and surrender. It would be so easy. All he had to do was let go of the paddles, turn his head to the side, and present his throat. There would be only a moment of pain, inconsequential, really, and then all his troubles would be gone. He could have anything he wanted, anything at all. His offering had been appreciated, but it wasn't enough. He had to give himself, as well.

 

Franklin was caught, felt like his mind was being torn in two. Just as he felt his fingers' grip on the paddles loosen, felt the honey-warm dark pressing against him once again, he remembered the look in the Minbari woman's eyes. That look of relief, of simple thankfulness. He pressed a defib paddle on either side of the creature’s head, and shouted a single word as loudly as he could, shouted it to himself, feeling all the universe condense down into this single second.

 

“ _Now!_ ”

 

He sent the charge, holding the buttons down, keeping them down, locking his arms against the backlash of the shock. The Carnifex howled, screamed. Franklin could smell burned flesh, acrid smoke. The thing shook, jolts running through that massive, deformed body. Then it dropped, still twitching.

 

"Leshke, I think you ran more charge into the defibrillator than we needed," Franklin said, and then he was laughing, still holding the paddles. The laughter kept going, like it was coming from someplace outside of him. Distantly, Franklin felt Leshke come up to him, grab onto his arms and force them down. She pulled back his fingers and yanked the paddles away. She brought his head down to her shoulder, rubbing his back, and Franklin didn’t even know that he was sobbing.

 

xxx

 

_1700 hours_

 

Delenn's quarters had been empty, her hatch open, hanging loosely from the top. Lennier tried to force down the panic that had welled up inside him, but after he came across this third torn and ruined body, he found it more and more difficult.

 

What if something had found her? Whatever it was that had entered the station, that had broken into his quarters. What if she had been taken, had been...but he couldn't finish the thought, would not allow himself to even consider the possibility. Her door hadn't been broken - she had left of her own volition. Lennier wondered for half a second why she had not come to his quarters, had not at least knocked on the door, called out to let him know she was all right, let him tell her the same was true for him; but that was a cruel thought. He had no idea in what circumstances she had found herself. He hoped that she was safe, but felt no comfort.

 

There was no hull breach; of that he was reasonably certain. Which meant that the alarm had been falsely given, that the lights and communications had been intentionally taken offline. The hatches had been sealed, and then something had broken into his quarters - come inside, but done nothing. Why had he been spared? Lennier did not know, and found his ignorance troubling. A story from his childhood occurred to him then, a mean tale he had heard when just barely old enough to attend temple on his own. Dark creatures, sallying forth to main and destroy. Lennier savagely banished the thought from his mind. This was no time for fables.

 

It would do no good to wander the station. That's all he had been doing; aimless, in shock, he now realized. He headed back to his quarters, meaning to gather what supplies he had, whatever could be turned to the purpose he now sought. He didn't know how much time he needed, how much time was left to him, but while he could, Lennier would free as many as he could.

 

xxx

 

_1715 hours_

 

Sheridan helped Garibaldi, who was patching cables and wires, trying to get the comm relay back online. Mostly, Sheridan just pointed the flashlight in the right place. He glanced over at Ivanova and Delenn, guarding the doors. He wished there were more than just the four of them.

 

"So where were you, when the alarm went off?" he asked, wanting to reach up and itch his neck. Delenn had washed the wounds thoroughly with a bottle of water they'd found on a desk, a half-eaten breakfast cold on top of it. Sheridan had been struck with the knowledge that someone had been eating that meal, starting their day off with the expectation it would be like any other, and then the unthinkable had happened. Where was that person now? Dead on Grey Seven? Stuck behind a hatch somewhere, in the dark, alone? Delenn must have seen something on his face, and had reassured him that the cuts were shallow, not at all threatening. Remembering that just made him think about the wounds again. Now it was like he could feel something in there, irritating the skin.

 

"In security," Garibaldi replied, snipping a wire. "Nothing was coming up on the sensors, and I was still cycling through the cams when the lights and power cut out."

 

"We stopped by security, on our way to C and C. Tapped out a howdy-do on the door. You weren't there."

 

"I must have already been on my way." It looked like Garibaldi was almost done. He was checking the connections; smooth, methodical.

 

"But your door was closed."

 

"After I hooked up the Babcom to the emergency battery and still couldn't get any calls out, I patched the battery power over to the door release there in the instrument panel. Popped the lock, raised the door, closed it behind me. What did you do?"

 

Sheridan wanted to smack himself. Why hadn't he thought of that? "That's what I did. What you did. That's what I did."

 

"That so?"

 

"Yep. Now, Ivanova..." But that was as far as he got, because the women were rejoining them, moving fast but quietly.

 

"Something coming our way," Ivanova whispered, and then the four of them hurried to the corner, hid under the big desk there. Sheridan hoped the shadows would conceal them; they'd stashed the bodies of the guards in a storage closet down the hall, but there were still flash burns on the walls, blood pools on the floor. Whoever - or whatever - was coming would know that something was up.

 

The instant the Carnifex entered, Sheridan felt a gibbering panic rise up inside him, something atavistic and horrible. It felt like there was a great thorn in his brain, jabbing into all the most secret parts of his mind, and he wanted to reach up and start tearing at his face, get it out, he had to get it out. The cloying smell of blood and death filled the room; thick, awful. Delenn was pressed up against him, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. He had just enough time to wonder at her presence of mind, that she could think about comforting someone else at this moment, and then she was rising gracefully to her feet, coming out around the desk.

 

Most of Sheridan wanted to scream at her to get back down, wanted to jump up and grab her and drag her under the desk, but there was a tiny part of him, down deep, the part that was screaming even now, that rejoiced that she had shown herself. Now the thing would take her, and he would be safe.

 

"You don't belong here. You should leave," Delenn said, her clear voice ringing like a bell. Sheridan told himself to stand, told himself to grab his PPG and start shooting, told himself to do anything, but he could not force himself to move. _God, Delenn_. That thing was going to kill her, and he couldn't even fucking move.

 

The Carnifex answered her with a dreadful sound, a shuddering growl that grew and grew, and Sheridan realized that it was laughing. Then there was a whispering sound, the sound he had heard as she had extended her denn'bok in the ducts, and the growl turned into a pained screech. The volume of the wail continued to climb, and Sheridan clapped his hands over his ears. Then there was a crash, a sound of something incredibly heavy slamming into the floor.

 

Silence, for a beat, and Sheridan felt his senses returning, felt the panic recede. Then he heard another sound, and he couldn't place it at first. He stood, and first he saw the Carnifex on the ground, Delenn's pike still sticking out of its head. Then he saw Delenn, and realized the sounds were her desperate gasps for breath. There was a note of hysteria in them, and when he saw her start shaking, he ran for her. Grabbed her, crushed his mouth against hers. He wanted to throw her down on the floor and fuck her senseless; he wanted to shake her as hard as he could. He settled for wrapping his arms around her, squeezing her tight.

 

"What did you do? What did you do, Delenn? What were you thinking?" She was still shaking in his arms, her hands grabbing at him. 

 

"It was going to take our minds," she gasped out. "It would have turned us into slaves, like the two in the hall. It would have eaten us. I had to kill it quickly. I had to kill it!" He kissed her again, kissed her forehead, kissed the tears off her cheeks. Buried his face in her neck, breathed her in, thinking he'd never smelled anything sweeter in his life; the memory of shampoo in her hair, the musky scent of her sweat. 

 

Ivanova's hands on his back, and she was saying something, urgency in her voice, but Sheridan shrugged her off. Delenn was grabbing the hair on the back of his head; she'd opened up the wounds on his neck again, and he could feel a trickle of blood under his collar. He couldn't get her close enough, no matter how hard he squeezed.

 

Then Garibaldi put his mouth right next to Sheridan's ear, yelling. "The links are online, John! John, you have to let her go." He finally did, feeling shaky himself as the wave of adrenaline and emotion died down. He kept one arm around her waist, raised his link to his mouth. Took a deep breath, got himself under control.

 

"Attention. This is Captain John Sheridan. There has been no hull breach, repeat, no hull breach. Babylon 5 has been boarded by a hostile party. If you are trapped inside quarters, patch the emergency power in your Babcom unit to the hatch controls in the instrument panel. Rally to emergency points alpha. Bring all the weapons you can."

 

xxx

 

_1745 hours_

 

Zack Allan was inside his closet, hiding under a blanket. If anyone had ever told him such an event would one day come about, he would have laughed in their face, told the story about the time he was six and his dad had pretended to be a ghost, and Zack had just grabbed his Little League bat and busted him one over the head. But after he had heard someone slaughtered in the hallway just outside his quarters, the most horrendous screams imaginable, worse than any shocker vid...Zack felt no shame whatsoever. He didn't think his closet would be much protection, the blanket even less, but it still felt like there was something out there, and he didn't want to be scrambling for cover if it decided to come for him.

 

Then his link came on, the abrupt hum jolting through the silence. The Captain's voice came out, and Zack was so glad to hear him that he nearly wept. A quick explanation of how to get out - it figured. The fact that Sheridan had worked that out and Zack hadn't was probably as good an explanation as any as to why one was a captain and running a space station, and the other worked security. They couldn't all be heroes. Rally to emergency points alpha. For Zack, that meant the main corridor, Green One. Zack counted to three and threw off the blanket, screwed his eyes shut and remembered that Little League bat - he'd hit a triple with it, the next year, sending home the tying run and they'd ended up winning that game, and how his dad had cheered - and then he opened the closet door.

 

He had a screwdriver somewhere, he thought. It would take him awhile to find it, longer to figure out how to get his doors open, but then he'd grab his weapons and hightail it down to Green One. 

 

Zack was going to help win this station back.

 

xxx

 

_1830 hours_

 

"I won't go in blind. First thing first, we set up recon patrols. We need to know how many we're dealing with, where they're located. We're going to have to rely on sneak attacks, blitzes; we can't give those things enough time to get in our heads, so we have to know exactly where we're headed before we go in." They were back in the ducts, between two vents, up on Grey Twelve. 

 

After the links had come back online, Sheridan had repeated his message twice while Garibaldi and Ivanova dragged desks and equipment in front of the comm relay, hoping it would provide at least some impediment should the enemy come back and try to sabotage their work. Then they ran down to the storage room they'd stowed the dead guards in, found a welder, and welded the doors shut.

 

"We have to move, we have to move!" Ivanova kept shouting, and they finally abandoned Grey Six, up into the manholes, up the ladders, climbing, climbing. Each floor they had to open the manhole cover blind, hope that section of the corridor was empty, that there weren't more of those mindless guards waiting nearby. Or worse.

 

Now they were holed up again. Reports had started coming in, glad voices on the link: Corwin was in C and C, and thought he had almost hooked back up with Stellarcom; Zack had just gotten out of his quarters, was on his way down to Green Sector; Menendez and fifteen pilots had already made their way out of the ready room and were on their way to the small arms locker on Blue Five when Sheridan's call had gone through. And Franklin had killed one of those things as well, was even now performing an autopsy, trying to learn what their weaknesses were, how they could best hit them.

 

Sheridan had briefly thought about calling for comm silence; he didn't know if the enemy was listening in, if they would try to intercept, but it was too good to hear everyone's voices, and he thought that the psychological advantage of everyone being back in contact with the team was more important than any tactical disadvantage. He’d thought briefly, once, about whose voices he hadn’t heard call in yet, wondered how many he had lost, but he pushed the thought aside; he couldn’t worry about it now.

 

“So where do you suggest we go first?” Garibaldi asked. 

 

“We could try going back down to Grey Eight, get the lights back on.”

 

“Not worth the risk,” Ivanova immediately said, looking through what she’d pilfered from the storage room: the welder, some kind of heavy chemical cleaner, a blow torch. Seven PPGs between the three of them, five pocket knives, and Delenn’s denn’bok. It wasn’t a bad arsenal, but Sheridan would give anything for a grenade or two. “We should get out of Grey Sector. I don’t think it’s a coincidence one of them came for us after we’d killed its little pets. If they’re not already, these decks’ll be swarming with the things soon enough.”

 

“Delenn? What do you think?” He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her; now he had one resting on her back, between her shoulder blades. After Sheridan had got the message out on the link, she had retrieved her pike, washed the end off, and had seemed to retreat inside herself a little, watching the others rush around, trying to seal things up and move. He hoped she was okay, but now was not the time to have a talk.

 

“I don’t know, John.” She sounded tired, wore out. He rubbed her back a little, wished he could do something more. Then she said, “We could continue to seek out their servants. Kill them, hope their masters come to investigate.”

 

“Guerilla warfare,” Garibaldi murmured, and Sheridan nodded in the dark. He’d give that order to Menendez and the pilots; maybe the Carnifex would catch on eventually, but they could try to whittle them down in the meantime. 

 

“Susan’s right; we need to move. I don’t think there’s anything in Green or Blue Sectors for us to do right now. Let’s get down to Brown Sector. We can try to access the secondary power grid there. And they must have gone there first, to set the auto warning up if nothing else. If that’s where they went first, that’s probably where their forces are still concentrated.”

 

A beat in the silence, as they gathered their strength. Then it was down the ducts again, crawling the length of Babylon 5.

 

xxx

 

_2000 hours_

 

Lennier had worked out a good system, and now he had two others helping him. They took their access cards, wrapped them in some thin human metal. Jammed them into the key card slots on the call boxes, then used a rod to pry off the call buttons. It was a matter of some luck, finding just the right angle for the rod, slipping it down into the call box mechanism and poking around, but once the connection was made - _click._ The hatch would unseal, and a grateful Minbari or Drazi or Gaim would come out, and join the others with Mr. Allan on Green One.

 

Lennier would have to remember to inform Mr. Garibaldi of this technique after all of this had been resolved. It definitely posed a threat to station security.

 

He came around a turn, sighed a little inside. It wasn’t that he had been putting off opening this particular set of rooms; he just hadn’t made opening them a priority. But now it was time, and Lennier set to work as efficiently as he had for the last several standard hours. Less than five minutes later... _click_.

 

Lennier waited patiently, and it wasn’t long at all before he heard those familiar tones, yelling out from inside the Ambassador’s quarters. And despite himself, Lennier found himself smiling, found that he was actually glad to hear him.

 

“Finally! I have certainly been waiting long enough. I had a meeting today, you know; a meeting with a beautiful woman. I suppose you think seeing you will make up for it, hmm? Vir, hurry! I can’t wait for you forever!”

 


	5. Fighting Back

_8 February 2260_

_2200 hours_

Zack had been joined by Raoul from security and Denise from station maintenance, and together the three of them were trying to coordinate two hundred and sixty-six aliens from Green Sector, more arriving in a steady stream all the time. Lennier had set up Ambassador Delenn’s quarters and his own just down the hall as makeshift clinics, as the emergency bulkheads sealing off Medlab Three was impregnable as far as they could tell. There were some bumps and bruises from people running into things and falling down in the dark, one probably broken arm, a couple cases of shock, one heart attack, and quite a few hypochondriacs who seemed to think the whole ‘station boarded by some kind of enemy who was ripping people to shreds’ thing was specifically designed to upset their lives.

Zack had sorta thought that Ambassador Mollari would fall into the final category, but instead, he seemed to be...enjoying himself. He was marching to and fro, shouting out orders, happy to do what Zack and Raoul told him to do as long as he could berate everyone while he did it.

“Weapons, you’re supposed to bring weapons! Go back to your quarters right this instant and find something. Surely you have knives, at least. Mr. Allan, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra PPG you could lend me?”

“Sorry, Ambassador,” Zack answered, helping Denise move the last market stall up against the wall, ushering in seven or eight new arrivals. “You’re going to have to make do with your sword there.” Zack had expected Vir to be a bigger help, but the Centauri aide looked even more frightened and twitchy than normal, drifting along in Londo’s wake, twisting his hands together.

“Londo, I think we’d be safer back in your quarters,” Zack heard Vir say for the third or fourth time. Each time, he said it louder and louder, and this time, the cluster of Centauri nearby stopped what they were doing to turn and listen. That was enough. Zack had done his best to try and keep everyone calm, and had been pleasantly surprised by how smoothly things had gone so far (he suspected that most everyone was just relieved to have something to do again, after so many hours cooped up in the dark); he did not need someone getting everyone all riled up. Zack took Vir none too gently by the elbow and steered him toward one of the few remaining clear areas.

“Look, Vir,” he said, trying to sound nice and reasonable, “I understand that today has been a hell of a day, and you don’t know what’s going on. And that can be scary. But the Captain needs numbers, and we’re gonna do what we can for him.”

“That’s what you don’t understand, Mr. Allan. I do know what’s going on.” His voice was getting louder again, and now it wasn’t just the group of Centauri looking their way, it was the Drazi and Brakiri, too. “This has happened before, to a Centauri outpost almost a century ago. It was just a small moon, only a few hundred families. After the nearest colony hadn’t heard from them in over a month, a scout ship was sent out. The families were all still there, but they were dead. Slaughtered. Their logs described a depressurization alarm. Everyone had taken refuge in the farm tent. And that’s where they were all found, almost five hundred people, all dead.”

Londo was coming their way now, looking intently at his aide. “Vir, there’s never been any proof that happened. Everyone knows that the Ellyrian outpost was destroyed by an asteroid impact. The rest...just stories, meant to frighten children.” Everyone was drifting their way, members from nearly all the alien races on B5, listening carefully.

“But it’s not just the Ellyrian outpost, Londo. A transport was lost in hyperspace thirty years ago, but not before the crew managed to relay an emergency broadcast to the beacon: something had boarded their ship, nearly all the passengers had been killed.”

“Something similar happened to one of our trade ships two hundred years ago. It was found drifting in space, not far from its rendezvous.” The Drazi who was speaking looked like he expected some monster to come out of the walls at any moment. “Almost every Drazi had been murdered, torn apart. There was one survivor, hiding in a secret compartment in the hold, but he had gone mad.”

Excited murmurs, and then everyone was telling their stories: a Brakiri war ship on patrol on the edge of their territory disappeared, only to turn up decades later, crewed by ravaged skeletons; a Gaim ship that had also been lost in hyperspace, a mysterious last message; a Hyach scientific station that the authorities had destroyed after finding the research teams dead. The whole thing had the atmosphere of one of those late-night conversations when everyone started telling stories about how rough their jobs were, or their problems with significant others, or the stupid shit they’d gotten into as kids; that heady feeling as you realized that you weren’t alone, that everyone else had the same stories to tell.

It seemed like it was going to get out of hand soon enough anyway, but then Vir grabbed Londo by the arms. “Londo, don’t you see? The Bloody Ones are here.” It was like there had been a perfectly timed beat of silence just as Vir said it, and his words carried through the crowd. One Centauri woman let out a gaspy little scream; the rest of the Centauri were talking loudly now, and a few were making for the exits.

“Stop! Everybody just stop.” But no one was listening to Zack. A young Minbari shouted out, “The Carnifex!” A Drazi was tugging at Zack’s uniform, trying to get his attention. “We call them rakizi, the destroyers. The destroyers, they're here.” Raoul was running his way, shouting something, but Zack couldn’t hear him. He could feel the panic about to explode, and in a few minutes, if he didn’t do something, he’d have a mob on his hands.

He shot his PPG into the ceiling. Once. Twice. Everyone fell quiet, a still, sullen silence that Zack didn’t like. But he kept his voice nice and calm, lowered his weapon, and turned to get a look at everyone as he spoke.

“I want everyone to listen very carefully. It doesn’t matter what’s on this station. Bloody ones, destroyers, Carni-whatevers. It doesn’t matter. Humans have a lot of scary stories too; vampires, werewolves, zombies. Maybe they’re on the station, too. It doesn’t matter. It won’t do any good to just hide and hope it goes away. None of your stories mentioned anything other than the odd, insane survivor. If we just scatter and hide, then we’re just doing what they want. They wanted us all alone, in our quarters, waiting. I for one am not going to do what they want. I’m not just going to sit and wait for some monster to come along and kill me. I’m going to stand and fight. This is my station, and no one’s going to take it away from me. Maybe we were all afraid of scary stories when we were kids, but we’re not kids anymore. Well, except for you kids over there, but if I remember anything from when I was little, I would have jumped at the chance to go hunt some werewolves or some ghosts.”

Zack paused, looking around. He thought his words were getting through, but it was hard to tell. There were a lot of scared faces still around, a lot of people who looked like they were just waiting for the chance to cut and run.

“Look, I’m not saying you can’t be scared. I was scared earlier, too. I was hiding in my closet, okay? But now we have a chance to get out there and do something. We have a chance to defend ourselves. So let’s grab our weapons, let’s calm down, let’s split up into teams, and when word comes from the Captain, let’s get out there and kick those Bloody Ones the fuck off our station!”

Silence for a beat. The teeter-totter was balanced right in the middle. Then Londo was clapping furiously, coming up to grab Zack’s shoulder with one hand, hoist his sword in the air. “Then I will be the first to enlist!” And then like dominoes, everyone was cheering, knives and bats and guns and plenty of things that weren’t supposed to be on the station up in the air, and even Vir had a fist raised. Zack had a mob on his hands, all right, but they were his mob.

* * *

_2300 hours_

Franklin came out of the isolab, and would have given just about anything if he could only have fifteen minutes in the hottest shower imaginable. He felt filthy, even though he’d worn a full contamination suit during the autopsy of the slain Carnifex. He’d found plenty of things during his examination, all of them troubling, none of them immediately helpful. He’d report everything to Sheridan - their links were still online, which he found more worrying than anything else - and hope he could make sense of it. The stims had worn off awhile ago, and Franklin felt groggy, tired, irritable.

Leshke was still fiddling around with the Babcom. She’d yanked the emergency power supply clean out of the wall, had done the same with every unit in Medlab One, and would have ducked under the emergency bulkhead to try and find other open rooms to poach if Franklin hadn’t stopped her. She had shown a few other patients how to hook them together, and now they had a string of batteries all lined up, still hooked to the defibrillator; Franklin didn’t think that would do any good if another Carnifex showed up, though. They had telepathic abilities, that much was obvious, and he figured that whatever trick they devised would only work the one time. Still, it was the best they had.

“Dr. Franklin. Stephen.” It was Hobbs, coming his way. “Why don’t you try to get a few hours rest? Everyone’s stable and taken care of for now.”

“I’m fine.” He was thinking about the Carnifex’s desire for blood. The way it had sent one of its minions up here asking for it, the way it had paused and considered when Franklin had brought it up. 

“You’re no good to anyone if you’re half-asleep,” she went on, and Franklin felt the familiar frustration start to build up. He hated being nagged, especially when he had work to do.

“I said I’m fine!” She left then, and he had half a second to feel bad for snapping at her, but then he was back to thinking about blood. He would have to do weeks of tests to learn how the Carnifex’s digestive system worked, if they actually consumed the blood as a source of nutrition or not. But the specifics didn’t matter. What mattered was the blood.

Franklin went to the pharmacy, locking the doors back up behind him. He started pulling bottles down, filling his pockets.

* * *

_9 February 2260_

_0030 hours_

Ivanova was sick to death of crawling around inside stuff. First between the bulkheads in her quarters, then up and down the ducts, miles and miles, and now they were crawling around in Downbelow, working their way up to auxiliary power in Brown Sector from, well, below. 

“That’s great, Menendez. Keep at it.” Sheridan cut the connection on his link. The team of pilots had just offed their third big monster, their fourth creepy zombie slave. Only one casualty for seven kills. Ivanova was jealous. She wanted to be out there killing some shit, not crawling through what she was pretty sure was a pak’ma’ra feeding trough.

“All right,” Garibaldi said, on point for the time being. They stopped behind him, and Ivanova begrudged the moment of rest. She wanted to keep going, get up there, as quick as they could. “We’re coming up on the water reclamation system. Big open room, but lots of cover. Let’s split into two pairs, one moves forward while the other covers, back and forth, and just see-saw across.”

“Okay,” she said, moving forward to sit next to Garibaldi. That Sheridan and Delenn would pair up together was a given. She still didn’t know if they were together-together or if this was one of those ‘today is very stressful and we keep almost getting killed’ things, but as long as Sheridan stayed on task she wasn’t going to say a word. She’d been worried about him, those first two minutes after Delenn had killed the Carnifex, and he’d practically mauled her, but he seemed mostly back to normal now.

None of them had talked about that experience, as though they just wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. Most of the haunted look had left Delenn’s eyes, but she was still sometimes a fraction of a second to slow to answer, sometimes had a look like she was someplace else; Garibaldi was quieter than usual; Sheridan more jumpy.

Ivanova herself was pissed. She was beyond pissed, she was livid. She was beyond livid, she was nearly fucking apoplectic. That thing had gotten inside her mind. She had felt it rooting around the edges, trying to sneak in, and she had done her best to block it out even as she had been about to piss herself with terror. Just before Delenn had killed it _something_ had gotten in, some shred, some hint of something alien and evil.

Ivanova felt like there was something still in there.

“Delenn, you should probably have a PPG if you’re going to be covering us.” Garibaldi passed back one of the spares, and Delenn turned it over in her hands, that look on her face again, like she wasn’t understanding anything she was seeing. Sheridan brushed her hair back from her face, looking at Delenn with such naked tenderness that Ivanova had to glance away for a moment, feeling like she was intruding.

“Are you going to be able to use it?” she asked, not wanting to get hit by friendly fire.

“Of course. One aims and shoots, correct? That shouldn’t be a problem.” Now that sounded more like the Delenn she knew, and Ivanova took a deep breath, knowing they were about to get going again. She reached over and squeezed Garibaldi's bicep for a second, and she saw him barely nod. Then they were up, ducking around piles of crates and under huge pipes, coming to the entrance of the water reclamation system. Enormous tanks in rows, connected with pipes of all sizes; generators still thumping away; scaffolds and equipment standing abandoned and eerie. They scurried behind the nearest tank, then covered around either side as Sheridan and Delenn joined them. Then they went forward, while Garibaldi and Ivanova covered them, waiting till they were behind the next tank until they went forward themselves.

They were making good time till the fifth tank, when Ivanova slipped on a puddle and did something to her ankle. Garibaldi stopped, came back to help her, and the three of them huddled around her.

"It's not broken," she whispered, probing her fingers into the already swelling flesh. But it hurt like a son of a bitch, and it was going to slow them down, and Ivanova felt like smacking herself. Of all the fucking things, she had to slip in a puddle.

"We can pull up for a little bit," Sheridan said. "Let you put it up, just give it a chance to rest."

"No can do, boss." Delenn pulled off one of her long stockings, and used it to tightly wrap the ankle, give it some extra stability. Ivanova wondered how many first aid stations they had passed, with actual bandages, and pain pills, and other wonderful, magical things they were sure to need at some point. She thought about how they had never heard back from the three sergeants who were supposed to run some recon around the fringes of Brown Sector. She remembered the Carnifex, the blood all over it. That ghost in her mind. "I'll be fine. I had to walk around on the broken foot last year; this is nothing compared to that. Let's get a move on."

Ivanova went straight for the next tank, Garibaldi hurrying to keep up. She knew she didn't have anything to prove, but she also felt like the others, Sheridan especially, were just looking for an excuse to take a break, and she was not going to be the excuse. Ivanova fully intended to sleep in her own bed tomorrow night, which meant they needed to get this finished. They were going to get the lights back on, they were going to open the doors, they were going to meet up with everyone, they were going to find all the murderous sons of bitches that had crashed the party, and if Ivanova had to kill each and every one of them herself, then she would.

It was a monotonous, slow journey across the room. There were hardly any emergency lights in here, and most of what light there was bounced off the water tanks and the scaffolds to make ominous shadows. And as much as Ivanova wanted to convince herself otherwise, she was moving slower and slower, favoring her ankle. It had started to stiffen up, and each step was making it worse.

"Susan, let's take a break," Garibaldi said, and it wasn't a suggestion this time. They waited for Delenn and Sheridan to join them. 

"Water, water everywhere," she said, and now that she was aware her mouth was dry it was all she could think about. She heard Sheridan's little grunt, and then Garibaldi put his arm around her. He had a nice shoulder to rest her head on, and Ivanova quit fighting it. She was going to rest. Just for a minute, though.

"How are you doing?" Ivanova almost answered before she realized that Sheridan was asking Delenn. And what was she, a dirty sock? Delenn murmured something in response, and then Ivanova closed her eyes and let herself doze a bit.

Garibaldi had her up on her feet sooner than she would have liked, which is just why she hadn't wanted to stop and take a break. Now she just wanted to find a nice, dark corner and curl up and sleep. It took a few minutes to wake herself back up, and then they were back to ducking around the tanks, covering the darkness, trying to see into shadows and hear anything over the gurgling of the water through the pipes and the roar of the generators. It was a little easier going, though; Garibaldi had taken the knapsack she’d had slung over her shoulders, with the supplies from the Grey Sector storage room. He must have done it while she’d been half-asleep. She was appreciative and annoyed at the same time. Felt a little like her old self again.

Nearly across the enormous room, Ivanova was struck with the sensation that they were not alone anymore. She hadn't heard anything, still didn't see anything, but all the shadows were suddenly imbued with menace. And then Ivanova felt herself overcome with a suffocating sense of dread, of imminent danger. It was so powerful and so sudden that she was afraid for a second that she would throw up. She grabbed Garibaldi, who had started around the next to last tank, and pulled him back. She didn't think she was going to be able to get breath enough to speak, and Garibaldi finally put one hand on the back of her neck and pulled her head close to his.

"Susan, what is it?"

"We have to go back. We have to get out of here."

"Is it your ankle?" Ivanova didn't even feel her ankle anymore; that pain had been totally knocked out by the warning signs going off in her mind. She was shaking her head wildly, and Garibaldi grabbed onto both her shoulders.

"We have to go. We have to go now." She pulled away from him, looked around the tank toward Sheridan and Delenn, one tank ahead of them, both looking back their way. Ivanova gestured for them to come back, and that's when they came for all of them.

* * *

_0130 hours_

Franklin had prepared blood and tissue samples from the Carnifex corpse, then set up an experiment that reminded him of early days in med school - injecting the tissues with different chemicals, medications, and solutions, then studying the results under the microscope hooked up to Leshke’s battery chain. He did the same thing with the blood samples. Most of the samples betrayed no reaction whatsoever. One did something very interesting.

Now Franklin was almost done with the injections of everyone in Medlab One. To the patients in the infirmary, it was as simple as injecting the solution into the IVs. Most of the other patients were told they were receiving a vitamin cocktail, which wasn‘t too far off the mark. He told the nurses and technicians the injection was an antibiotic he’d prepared after exposure to the Carnifex, afraid there might have been contamination; one, a young man who Franklin honestly couldn’t remember seeing before, was a little hesitant, but Franklin charmed him in a few minutes.

But Hobbs, he knew, would see through any story he came up with, so he just told her the truth.

"2000 milligrams of Vitamin C. It dissolves Carnifex flesh." Hobbs just looked at him then, holding the syringe in her hand. Franklin became convinced that she was going to throw it in his face, ask for him to step down for the duration of the crisis, even lock him up. Then she rolled up her sleeve, stuck the syringe in her arm, and injected herself.

"Am I the last one?" she asked. He knew what she was really asking.

"I didn't want to take the risk that you'd object."

"I don't know why you don't trust me, Stephen. I'm not just talking about today, either." Franklin walked away from her then, made his rounds even though technically he'd just done so. She followed him, and the rush he'd just felt from doing something even marginally productive melted away into the same old anger.

"Now is not the time, Dr. Hobbs."

"If we're going to get through this, we're going to have to work together. I could have helped you do your tests, distribute the injections. You do not have to carry all of this on your shoulders alone." The sad thing was, he agreed with her. There was no reason why he kept her out of the loop, why he insisted on doing everything on his own, why he fought against his better instincts. And the fact that he knew all of that just made him angrier, made him lash out even more, made him pointedly close the doors to the infirmary behind himself, shutting her out.

* * *

_0200 hours_

There were ten of them. Nine were mindless slaves - two humans, three Narn, a Drazi, and three Centauri. The tenth was Minbari, and he was no slave. Ivanova saw Delenn keep looking at him, could tell she wanted to ask questions, and it was all Ivanova could do to keep from screaming at her to stay quiet. The sense of dread she'd been afflicted with intensified the moment she laid her eyes on the Minbari, and she was sure that speaking to him was the worst possible thing they could do.

Ivanova had gotten one shot off, the others none at all. The slaves were on them immediately, not biting and tearing, but subduing. Most of their weapons were taken away, put aside; Ivanova was very aware of the pocket knife still in her shoe, and was pretty sure that Delenn's denn'bok was still tucked away inside her dress. Their links had been removed, crushed. The Minbari circled them, saying nothing, only looking. There was something wrong with him. Ivanova couldn't put her finger on it - he seemed like the Minbari she saw every single day. He seemed to take particular interest in her, looking at her even while standing in front of Sheridan, or Garibaldi. Ivanova made herself meet his eyes; she wouldn't let him know how afraid she was.

"Little soldiers," the Minbari finally said. "How far you've come." Delenn spit something out then, in her own language, and Ivanova had never seen her so angry, didn't know Delenn was capable of being that angry. The Minbari only laughed. The nine slaves made some awful noise, like choking screams, and Ivanova realized with a shiver that they were laughing, too.

"Are you working with them?" Sheridan asked, his fists clenching at his side. "With those monsters? Why would you do that?"

"I have no interest in explaining myself to you, little soldier." And around them he went again, a slow circle, eyes moving up and down their bodies. But especially Ivanova's.

"Listen, buddy," Garibaldi said, and Ivanova envied how smooth his voice was, how calm he seemed. "I don't know if this is a for-hire situation here or what, but you are in way over your head. Your bosses? Not that nice."

The Minbari stepped close to Ivanova, and she was afraid he was going to touch her. She could feel her skin crawl. He answered Garibaldi, but his eyes never left hers.

"And what makes you think they are the ones in charge?" 

Ivanova told herself it was a mistake, told herself that it might very well be the last thing she'd ever do - and then, like so often happened, that very fact convinced her that it was the best possible thing she could do. If it was her last act, then by God, it would be a good one.

She spit in the Minbari's face.

Ivanova hoped that he would recoil, that he would shout out, even that he would strike her. But he just stood there, face still impassive, the barest hint of a smile. The Minbari raised one hand, almost an afterthought. One of the slaves came to him, that same horrible smile frozen on its face, and licked the spit off his face. Then the Minbari took his raised hand, caressed the side of Ivanova's face. She tried to pull away and found that she could not.

"Join me."

It was a struggle to get the words past her lips, but she found that well of anger inside herself and drank deep. "Fuck you, bonehead." She didn't think Delenn would mind the racial epithet, not now. And now the Minbari did recoil a bit, shaking his head. Ivanova felt the oppressive dread lessen a little bit, felt her ability to cordon off her mind seem to strengthen in turn, and not even knowing what she was doing, decided to press her advantage. "Furthermore, you bald piece of shit, if it's the last thing I do, I will make sure that I'm the one who ends your miserable, sorry excuse for a life. I will rip that stupid fucking piece of bone right off your head. I will cut off your fingers and shove them down your throat. I will keep one of your ugly monster fucks alive so that you can watch as I feed the rest of you to it, piece by piece. And before you die, I will be the last thing that you ever see, and you will see me smile."

The Minbari collapsed onto the ground, clutching his head. One ridiculous thought flashed through Ivanova's head - _what a pussy_ \- and then all hell broke loose. Like they were on the exact same wavelength, Garibaldi and Sheridan dove for the pile of weapons. Delenn already had her denn'bok out and extended, and started cutting a swathe through the slaves. Ivanova just knelt, slipped her pocket knife out of her shoe, and went for the Minbari. 

The blade wasn't very long, but it was sharp. She was preparing for one slice, right across his throat, and just before she made it he managed to get a hand up in time. The knife slid through the palm of his hand with hardly any resistance, and Ivanova watched the fingers fall limp, useless. She sliced right back the opposite way, but he turned his head, and she laid his face open to his jaw bone.

The sound of PPG bursts all around her, the wordless screams of the zombie slaves. Ivanova changed her grip on the knife, then started stabbing down into the Minbari's face. She got his eye, his cheek, and then he pushed her off, amazingly strong. She skidded along the slick floor, and for a second she thought she'd lost her knife, but it was caught somehow in the folds of her jacket. She pulled it out, and she knew she'd have one more shot while he gained his feet. If she could just get up and get right back in the fight, he wouldn't be ready. She'd have him.

She stood, and then her ankle gave out underneath her.

Endless seconds while she got herself back up on her knees, then she looked all around, but couldn‘t see the Minbari. She saw Garibaldi crumpled at the bottom of one of the tanks, and hoped he was only unconscious. Sheridan was beating one of the slave's heads in with the butt of his PPG. And the two other slaves left standing were dragging Delenn to the doors, the Minbari trailing behind.

"John, don't let them take me!" Delenn screamed, and Ivanova struggled to her feet, armed with nothing but a pocket knife. She watched Sheridan run for Delenn, and the last human slave came at him, knocking him back. The Minbari went forward, opened the doors, the Drazi still pulling Delenn with him, an arm against her throat. 

Ivanova made it to the pile of weapons. Only a single PPG was left; Garibaldi and Sheridan must have grabbed the others, or they had been scattered. Ivanova felt tired, faint. Raising the PPG was a struggle. Delenn screamed again, and it might have been John's name, but it might not have. Ivanova aimed - better that Delenn die here, quickly, mercifully. One clean shot, that's all she needed, but she couldn't seem to get her vision to clear. Two Delenns swam in front of her, and Ivanova found herself strangely aware that her shirt was wet. 

"Susan, no! No!" Ivanova fired at the same exact second that Sheridan tackled her, and then the doors were slamming shut, and the world went dark.


	6. Always Darkest

Always Darkest

_9 February 2260_

_0230 hours_

Zack couldn't get a hold of the Captain on the link anymore. Or Ivanova, or Garibaldi. They’d been checking in every hour or two, one of the three of them, but he hadn’t heard from them in almost three hours. And now he couldn’t get a call through to any of them. The links were still operative - he’d just talked to Menendez, who claimed that Blue Sector was clear - so Zack found himself pretty sure that something had happened to the four of them.

He was afraid they’d been lost.

There was no way he was going to tell that to the crowd in Green One, though. All the work he’d done the last three or four hours - cajoling, soothing, promising, vaguely threatening - would be shot to hell. There’d be panic, of that he had no doubt. Zack and Raoul and Denise had come up with a good plan on their own, although they’d been waiting to hear from the Captain, get his input, before they put anything into action; they were coordinating with Menendez and another group of mostly maintenance workers who had just come back from running recon on Grey Sector. Zack didn’t like the idea of being in charge, and knew that the aliens in Green One would like it even less.

So he lied to them.

“All right, listen up!” he yelled, coming down the stairs. “I just got off the line with the Captain.” A glance from Raoul at that, who wasn’t happy about lying, but who was willing to let it go. “We’re going to wait about half an hour for one of the other teams to get into position, and then we’re going in. We’re going to march right down to Grey Sector and we’re going to get this station back online.” Cheers and shouts, and Zack let himself think for a minute, just a minute, that they might actually pull this thing off.

* * *

_0230 hours_

At first, Garibaldi couldn’t figure out where his legs had went. He was looking at them, he was smacking one of them; nothing. He also had a bad taste in his mouth. What had he eaten last? But before he could try to remember, Garibaldi became aware of the fact that he was on the floor. And what was he lying next to?

Then it all came back, in a jolt, and just as the sharp, achy feeling of pins and needles started moving through his legs, Garibaldi tried to get to his feet, find his PPG, and look around all at the same time. He ended up banging his head into the water tank he’d been thrown against, falling down again. 

“John! Susan!” There were those creepy things all around, that Minbari who had given him the bugger-boos, where was his fucking gun, shit! On his feet, and the first thing Garibaldi was struck by were the bodies all around. Those slave things, lying dead here and there. And then he saw Sheridan and Ivanova, and he just knew that Ivanova was dead. She was lying on her back, her jacket unzipped, another wadded up in a ball on her stomach; the white shirt under it was no longer white, but stained a red already going brown. Sheridan’s back was to him, sitting next to Ivanova on the floor, one hand loosely resting on top of his jacket pressed on top of what must have been a serious wound.

Garibaldi made his shaky way over. Ivanova’s face was white, almost ashen. He felt his stomach drop to the vicinity of his ankles, and then her eyes opened to half-mast, looking vaguely his way. He dropped to his knees beside Sheridan.

“Susan. What happened?”

He expected a whisper, something soft and choked. A sickroom voice. Her voice was as strong as ever, but Garibaldi closed his eyes at her words, and the dead tone she delivered them in. “They took Delenn.” He looked over at Sheridan. The Captain was just looking at his own hand, resting on top of the jacket he’d used to staunch the bleeding. There was blood on his face - Garibaldi guessed that it was Susan’s. He put a hand over on Sheridan’s shoulder, but he might as well have tried to comfort a statue.

Garibaldi moved Sheridan’s hand aside, gingerly pulled back the jacket. “I don’t think it got anything important,” Ivanova said, eyes closed again. “Stuck myself with my own knife.” He wondered how much blood she’d lost. He couldn’t see very well, but it looked like she’d cut herself on the side, well away from the important stuff. Still, if she were bleeding internally, they’d have no way of knowing.

“I was waiting for you to wake up.” Sheridan was getting to his feet, not looking at either of them. He made his way over to what had been their confiscated weapons pile, scattered when the two of them had went for the weapons after Ivanova had put the whammy on the Minbari leader. Garibaldi watched him go through the knapsack Ivanova had used to carry the supplies she’d grabbed from the storage closet in Grey Sector - the welder, the chemical cleaner, and the blow torch. Sheridan was moving slowly, deliberately - he took the blow torch and went to the big double doors at the end of the reclamation room. Tried to figure out how to turn the torch on.

Garibaldi joined him, feeling stabs of pain in the small of his back and around his sides, which were nothing compared to the pounding in his head. “Let me do that, John.”

“Take Ivanova out of here. Get her to Green Sector, to Medlab Three.”

“Did they take Delenn through these doors?” Sheridan got the blow torch going, but he was going to end up blinding himself trying to cut through. He didn’t answer, just started burning a line. Garibaldi shuffled back to the knapsack, but Ivanova hadn’t packed any eye protection. He looked back up, ready to tell Sheridan that he had to stop, but he had his eyes closed, opening them periodically to check his progress and move the torch.

Garibaldi found a PPG with half a charge and two pocket knives. Then he went over to Ivanova, who had managed to sit up. He didn’t think she’d be able to walk, but then she insisted on getting to her feet and he had no choice but to help her.

“Susan, take it easy.”

“Shut up. Delenn’s pike is over there. Get it.” He looked over at where she’d waved a limp hand, and saw the silver pike on the ground, both ends covered with blood. He picked it up, surprised by how light it was. “Give it to him.” Sheridan, who had started on the second side of the square he was cutting out of the door. If he didn’t know any better, Garibaldi would think that he was completely in control - he was moving methodically, smoothly, no tremors or anything like that. But there was something in the hunch of his shoulders that made Garibaldi very worried. 

“I told you to get Susan out of here.”

“You should have a weapon.” Garibaldi held the pike out, and Sheridan glanced at it. Something in his eyes, then, something hard and broken. A beat, and he turned back to his torch. Garibaldi propped the pike up on the wall next to the door, and went back to Ivanova. He grabbed her tight around the waist, holding her on the opposite side from the wound in her stomach; she wrapped an arm around his neck, wincing as she raised it. Garibaldi had to stand right where he was, blink the dizzies out of his head; they were going to be a hell of a team, trying to get back to Green Sector. And no crawling around in ducts, either - they were going to have to walk back, in the open.

Back the way they’d come, no need to hide anymore. Garibaldi turned one last time to see Sheridan start cutting on the third side.

He wondered if he’d ever see him again.

* * *

_0300 hours_

Franklin had been turning the question over and over in his mind. Finally he locked himself into his office, injected himself with some more stims, and grabbed pen and paper. He was just going to have to make a list. See which side won out, nice and objective, and then that’s what he would do.

_Pros: Doing something productive. Going on the offensive. Might be best weapon we’ve got. Give me a chance to get out of Medlab._

_Cons: Dangerous. Might not work. We will almost definitely need all the blood we’ve got when the crisis is over, and the injured start piling up._

Franklin stared at what he had written, looking for the one thing that would jump out and proclaim itself as the definitive reason to act or not act. He saw it, and when he did, he realized that it wasn’t the answer he wanted, deep down.

 _We will almost definitely need all the blood we’ve got when the crisis is over, and the injured start piling up._ He circled it. There was no doubt about it - there were going to be a lot of injured people, some critically, some who would need transfusions if they were going to survive. The station had a sizeable blood supply, but only when considering normal needs; they didn’t have anything close to what they needed for a crisis of this scale. Every single unit of blood he took out of Medlab was a unit that someone would need, maybe as their last hope of survival.

And that was the point, really. If anyone on the station was going to survive, every last Carnifex would have to be driven off or killed. The crisis just wouldn’t end with a snap of fingers and a wish. Those monsters weren’t just going to get bored, decide they’d rather go play a game of poker. Maybe scheduled dockings would start piling up, cargo ships and transports and merchant vessels trying to contact the station and failing; realizing something was wrong; one or two returning home, reporting the news; someone deciding to send out help. Maybe that would happen. But if it did, it could be weeks before help arrived. They would have to save themselves.

Franklin tossed the pen and paper aside, took one minute to center himself, and then he was up and moving. He had a lot to get ready if this was going to work.

* * *

_0315 hours_

Zack led the force of mostly aliens from Green Sector, nearly four hundred strong now, toward Medlab Three. The maintenance team had stopped there after returning from Grey Sector recon, and called in five minutes ago to say that they had started cutting through the emergency bulkhead sealing off Medlab Three. Zack had sent ahead Lennier and about a dozen others; hopefully they’d be ready to get started by the time the rest of them got there. He wanted this to go quickly and orderly, as much as possible. Glancing back at the motley assortment of folk behind him, he wasn’t holding his breath.

Final approach. “All right, everyone, listen up!” Zack yelled, glad he had experience in that if nothing else. “I want Drazi and Brakiri over on the left side of the corridor - no injections for you. That’s just the way it goes. Anyone else who wants out, to the left. Everyone else, over here on the right. I want two straight lines. Have a sleeve rolled up and ready to go. I’ve seen the way all of you act when you debark onto the station - none of that now. We need this to go nice and smooth. Any questions?”

No questions, just a brittle nervous expectancy hanging over the crowd. There hadn’t been many questions when Zack first told them about the plan, either, after getting off the link with Dr. Franklin; a few Drazi had protested their exclusion, but Vitamin C would make them sick as dogs, just like the Brakiri, and it wasn’t worth it. Everyone else seemed to accept it - some with a hint of feral anticipation, others with barely-concealed dread. 

They weren’t going to Medlab Three itself, but the main corridor just adjacent. They had only needed access, to retrieve syringes, the Vitamin C. There was Lennier up ahead, everything arranged with startling efficiency, tables behind him set up with vials and syringes, the volunteers ready to administer the injections. Zack had tried to pick at least one volunteer from each race, not wanting to deal with xenophobic bullshit right now.

“Mr. Lennier, you find everything okay?”

“Yes. I wanted to thank you again, Mr. Allan, for taking the time earlier to let me know that Ambassador Delenn was well.”

“No problem.” Zack rolled up his sleeve, and Lennier slid the needle into a vein. “You’re pretty good at that. I’ve had nurses up in Medlab One stick me three times before they got it in.” Lennier only smiled, that sorta ambiguous Minbari smile that Zack usually found disquieting but which now he found oddly comforting. A thought occurred to him as Lennier injected the solution in, removed the needle; _I’m glad we’re on the same side._

* * *

_0400 hours_

Sheridan walked through Brown Sector, and as far as he knew, he was alone. It felt like he was utterly alone, the only man on the entire station. While earlier this sensation would have scared him, would have reminded him of childhood nightmares, would have made him want to check over his shoulder and hesitate before walking through the intersections of corridors, now he felt very little. A distant ache, just below his sternum, and he wasn’t sure if it was grief or just hunger; his thoughts were covered in a dark, sarcastic sheen. He didn’t like them. He didn’t want to listen to himself at all. So he just shut the whole thing down, let his mind slip into neutral; it was easier that way.

There was no trail to follow. No handy spattering of blood drops, or torn wisps of fabric showing him the way he should go. She could be anywhere. She could be nowhere. So Sheridan just walked, past closed door after closed door; empty halls; silence.

He held her pike. He hadn’t been able to figure out how to shrink it down, and she had made it look so easy, just the slightest movement of her hand. He felt better with it extended, anyway. The caked blood on the ends, the few clinging hairs. She’d killed five of them herself before...

There he went, thinking again.

The air recycling systems were up ahead. He didn’t think they’d have went there; too loud to hear anyone approaching, a bad place to gather. Sheridan decided to make for the primary alarm. Maybe he could get into the system, make a station-wide announcement. He didn’t know what he’d say. Normally he didn’t have a problem with the rousing speech thing, but he felt like if he tried to open his mouth now, nothing would come out. But the right message might give the creatures some pause, make them think that they more on their hands to deal with than they’d originally thought. That Minbari, who had strutted around them, commanding his brain dead slaves - Sheridan wanted him to feel fear, wanted him to worry about what was coming for him, just around the corner. 

Something up ahead. He felt it before he heard it. That sharp prick of fear in the center of his mind, tearing at him. He tried to turn and run, and found that he was frozen completely still. He couldn’t even lift his feet.

There it was. A Carnifex. Eight feet tall, arms as big around as the pipes snaking overhead, claws at least six inches long. Sheridan almost felt relief. There would be pain for a little while, but then it would be over. He realized now that ever since he’d cut through the doors, he hadn’t been looking for Delenn. He’d been looking for Delenn’s body. Now he was glad that he wouldn’t have to face the sight of it. He felt like a coward.

The Carnifex lumbered his way. Sheridan let himself wait for it, quit fighting against the fear. And just like that, the terror was gone, and instead, he felt his mind filled up with promises of relief, of peace, of anything he wanted.

What he wanted was Delenn. But she was gone. And one of these things had taken her, had done God knew what to her. Sheridan remembered her screams as she had been dragged from the room. Rage bubbled up in him, thick and seductive, flames flickering out through his limbs. The Carnifex paused, claws clicking. Sheridan felt all the whispers and threats fall from his mind, and he was aware that he was still holding her fighting pike. The thing was just standing there, its bulk filling the corridor ten meters away. 

Sheridan brought up the sharp end of the pike and scraped it over the palm of his hand. Blood welled up. He turned the palm face-out toward the Carnifex, let the blood drip down for a few seconds.

“Here! This is what you want, isn’t it? Then come and get it!” The Carnifex seemed torn - it lurched forward two steps, but had turned partly away, angling back the way it had come. Why wasn’t it running at him? “Come on!” Sheridan went forward himself, strong, steady steps. Then he ran at it, pike held out in front of him, and as the creature finally seemed to make up its mind and hurtle forward to strike, Sheridan stabbed it straight into the Carnifex’s gut.

The flesh there seemed half-rotten, and Sheridan felt it give way with sickening ease. He drew the pike out, a long string of black blood hanging from it. Horrible, diseased lumps of flesh slid out of the wound, which was larger by far than the diameter of the denn’bok. The Carnifex was still coming at him, swiped its claws - the tips of them caught Sheridan across his chest, and each of the four slices instantly burned white-hot. He changed his grip on the pike, brought one end down hard on the top of the creature’s head, knocking it down to its knees, which brought its head roughly at the height of his own. 

He slammed the denn’bok forward again, into where the Carnifex’s eyes would be if it had any. Again that feeling that the meat and skin were hardly anchored to the bone underneath. Those monstrous teeth clicked his way, one of its hands grabbing his arm, claws sinking down into his flesh. With a cry, Sheridan kicked as hard as he could, foot planted in the middle of the Carnifex’s chest. The thing loosened its grip enough for Sheridan to yank his arm away, and it fell back some, but not before Sheridan felt his foot sink into the creature almost half an inch. He stumbled back, fell onto his back, the pike dropping from his hands.

Where was it? Sheridan panicked, and saw the Carnifex rise to its full height again. It hissed, black liquid dripping from its fangs, and it came for him. The pike was either on his left or his right, he didn’t know which. He’d only have time for one move. The Carnifex began to leap, claws extended, already slick with his own blood.

Sheridan rolled to his right. His left hand reached out blindly, hitting the wall, sliding across the floor; it closed around the denn’bok. He rolled back over onto his back, angling the pike up just as the Carnifex landed on top of him. Claws dragging down the side of his face, those teeth only inches from his throat. The weight of it was instantly suffocating; he felt the breath pushed out of him, and he couldn’t expand his chest enough to bring in another.

The Carnifex was dead on top of him. He could see the other end of the pike, sticking out of its back. With the last of his strength, Sheridan pushed enough at one shoulder to be able to wriggle out from underneath its chest, and rest there, its arm still slung over him in a parody of an embrace. Fire every place its claws had struck; blood running down into his eyes. He gulped in air, let his heart slow enough that he no longer feared it would explode. Then he crawled the rest of the way out from under the beast, pulled the denn’bok out from the other side, and continued on his way.

* * *

_0430 hours_

“Great, Zack. Good to hear. We’ll be coming your way shortly.” Franklin cut the link, turned back to Hobbs. She was injecting the last of the blood bags. “We’re good to go.”

“They’re sure Green Sector is clear, as well?”

“Pretty sure. No reports in almost five hours. And the last two recons to Grey Sector turned up nothing. They’re pretty sure they’ve all fallen back to Brown Sector, which is probably where they’ve set up their base of operations. That’s where we’re gonna go.” Franklin ran through his checklist again. He couldn’t think of anything else they’d need. He looked up at Hobbs. She was anxiously looking around Medlab, twisting her fingers together. “Dr. Hobbs? You all right?”

“Yes. I just...”

“What?”

“Do you think this is a good idea? Going out there?”

“Of course not. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, though. A lot of people are out there right now, throwing themselves into the fire, and we’ve been locked away up here, relatively safe, all things considered.”

“I understand the desire to try and...make a difference. But we’re not soldiers, Dr. Franklin. This is our place, right here. This is what we were trained for. To patch up the wounded. To make the dying comfortable. We’re supposed to be here when the soldiers come back.”

“And if we were fighting a civilized battle against a civilized enemy, I would agree with you.” He suddenly saw how tired she was, the lines around her eyes. He wondered how stressful the long day had been for her, worrying about what was going to happen next, the monsters in their midst, and him, stalking about sometimes in the grip of a mania, sometimes full of barely-controlled hostility. Franklin walked over to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “Lillian. If you want to stay here...”

She smiled then, and ten years fell off her face. “I thought you’d be above pulling the oldest trick in the book.”

“What do you mean?”

As she stacked the last of the blood units on the cart, she let her voice drop down to a deep register, mocking him. “Oh, Dr. Hobbs, don’t worry about anyone thinking you’re a coward. Stay here and hide, if you’re too afraid to go. No one will think any less of you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t. I still needed to hear it. Let’s go.” She started pulling her cart - the diagnostic equipment that usually rested on it stowed against the wall, covered instead with wastebaskets and empty desk drawers filled with plastic bags of blood. A second and a third cart had already been taken out to the main corridor by the handful of patients who were well enough to accompany them. There hadn’t been many volunteers. About half the Medlab staff had wanted to come, but Franklin was a pragmatist - they’d still need most of the medical personnel to stay.

He grabbed the satchel that held all their remaining Vitamin C, which wasn't much, took one last look around Medlab, and turned to leave himself. He nearly walked into Leshke, looking at him steadily.

“I will go with you.”

“We have enough volunteers. You should stay here.” She didn’t say anything else, just followed him out into the main corridor anyway. Franklin was too tired to argue with her. He joined Hobbs and the three patients waiting there. Together the six of them pushed the carts under the gaping hole at the bottom of the emergency bulkhead, ducked under themselves, and started making their way toward Brown Sector.

* * *

_0530 hours_

Sheridan had finally sat down for ten minutes and figured out how to shrink the denn’bok down to napkin ring size after he’d gotten too tired to carry it anymore. It had started dragging on the floor despite how hard he tried to keep it straight at his side, and there was still a part of him that wanted to approach quietly.

The primary alarm system was just ahead. No guards out front. Probably didn’t figure anyone was dumb enough to just walk up here. Sheridan approached, not bothering with stealth. The door was open, and there was just enough light from the emergency lights in the hallway to see by. It took him longer than he’d expected - his brain felt like it was ticking along half a second behind the rest of his body - but he finally figured out how to get the loudspeaker system engaged, everything ready to broadcast the message he was ready to send out, without even knowing what he was going to say.

“Attention, residents of Babylon 5. This is Captain John Sheridan. I am speaking to you now in the hopes that you will join me in fighting off the enemy still attempting to control this station. There are a few important things we’ve learned. One, the very large, misshapen aliens, the ones the Minbari call Carnifex, may seem physically intimidating, but they are weaker than they appear. They are susceptible to powerful enough blows; their flesh seems rotten, falling apart. If you can, hit them with all you’ve got, preferably in teams. Second, all of the enemy aboard - the Carnifex, the mindless ones seemingly under telepathic control, and any other hostile forces - do not deal well with anger. It seems to interfere with their telepathy. So, if you find yourself paralyzed with fear while confronting them, just think about everything that’s happened to you today. Think about those you may have lost. And let yourself get really angry.” His voice caught then, and whatever else he might have said was gone beyond recall. He lowered his head for a moment, gathered his remaining strength.

“Don’t let them win. That’s all.”

* * *

_0545 hours_

Garibaldi had Susan leaned up against the wall. They listened to Sheridan’s voice, echoing through the empty corridor. Garibaldi thought he’d never heard the Captain sound stronger, more steady. He wondered how he had managed to get the message out at all. Despite himself, he thought maybe they still had a chance.

Susan wasn’t doing well. The last quarter mile or so had taken them nearly an hour. He tried once to just pick her up and carry her, but his back had spasmed, and he’d nearly fallen right on top of her. So now they just moved nice and slow, one step at a time. He tried to bear as much of her weight as he could, but the angle of his shoulders and hips, down toward her, was starting to kill him. The muscles were starting to knot up, and he was now pretty sure that he’d broken at least a couple ribs when he’d apparently been thrown into the side of the water tank.

“Don’t let them win. That’s all.” The loudspeakers cut out with a whine, and then the silence descended once more. Now it sounded thick, cloying. Garibaldi felt dull despair settle over him once again, now that Sheridan was no longer speaking to him, omniscient and powerful, that commanding voice making him think that someone else would take care of it all.

He leaned back over, arranged Susan’s arm over his shoulders, grabbed her around the waist, practically lifted her clean off the floor as they started walking again.

“We make a pretty pair, don’t we?” she asked, and Garibaldi tried to tell himself he hadn’t heard the faint slur in her speech. Then her head was dipping forward, and he shook her.

“Stay awake, Susan.”

“I’m awake.” He looked down at her as they passed right under an emergency light. It was hard to tell for sure, but he thought her knife wound had opened up again.

“So, what was your favorite vid when you were a kid?” he asked, keeping his tone as light as possible. At first he thought she was thinking, and then he thought she was taking the question far more seriously than it deserved; then he saw that she’d either fallen asleep, or slipped into unconsciousness.

Garibaldi laid her down, his ribs and back and knees protesting loudly as he tried to do so as gently as possible, which meant he had to kneel down himself. It would have been easier if he could have just dropped her.

He didn’t want to peel back her shirt, because he didn’t want to start the wound bleeding again any more than it already was. He needed something he could wrap around her middle. Why weren’t there any fucking first aid kits on this station? He hadn’t seen a one the whole time they’d been walking. Then he remembered Ivanova’s ankle. He scooted along the floor down to her feet, wincing at every movement. Delenn’s stocking, still wrapped around her twisted ankle. Son of a bitch, there this whole time. Garibaldi unwound it, then scooted back up. He got an arm under her shoulders, lifted her enough that he could wrap the stocking tight around her abdomen. He didn’t think he’d be able to finish; his muscles were trembling, his head was pounding worse than the worst hangover he’d ever had, and Susan was dead weight. 

Garibaldi finished, then checked her pulse. Thready, weak. He was going to have to carry her. He just didn’t know how he’d manage. He couldn’t start sitting on his ass like he was now. Spinning his legs around, getting to his knees; Christ, he felt like he was seventy years old. _Arm under her shoulder, arm under her knees; don’t lift with the gut, the last thing you need is a hernia. Take a break, make sure you got her._

Then the fear was on him, all around him, he was swimming in it. He wanted a drink, the urge almost as strong as the fear, it was all he could think about. He looked down the way they’d come, and saw the first Carnifex appear out of the shadows. Garibaldi still thought he might be able to run, Susan’s weight be damned, but then the second Carnifex followed, and the third.

Garibaldi did drop Ivanova then, even heard the back of her head thunk loudly against the floor. He could taste the fear, feel it clawing at the backs of his eyes. Then something was speaking to him, not in words, but in images, thoughts, feelings. He could have a drink. He could have as many as he wanted. Lovely, cool amber liquid, burning right down to his gut, warming him up. That good numbness, everything okay, everything nice. No problems at all; no problems that couldn’t be solved by a good smoke and a good drink.

Garibaldi thought to look down the corridor again, and the three Carnifex were close, very close. He only had to wait just a little longer. He turned their way, pulled the collar of his jacket down, turned his head to the side. He felt something at his belt, something tugging down there, but it was so far away. 

They were almost to him. They were beautiful. Garibaldi closed his eyes.

* * *

_0600 hours_

Sheridan walked. No goal, no plan, no destination in mind. Just walked. He had hoped that another one would come to him, scenting the blood from his wounds like a shark, but he had seen nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing. At one point he walked under an air vent, cool air blowing over him, and he wondered why he was cold. It was nearly half an hour later that his mind worked through the question, and realized he had taken his jacket off. He couldn’t remember why. Had he taken his jacket off? Maybe he hadn’t put it on today at all.

There was something up ahead, on the floor. Something dark. He almost walked past it, not caring enough to bother turning his head. At the last second, he did. A pool of blood on the floor, still sticky. There was something else, too. 

Sheridan knelt, one little part of his mind knowing what he was looking at, the rest confused, wanting the answer. There were pieces of fabric in the blood. He lifted one of them, looked at it. Torn on one edge, like it had been ripped. Blood soaked. The other pieces were the same. Sheridan held it close to his eyes, but with the blood and the red emergency light, he couldn’t make out the color. Why did it seem that the color was important?

Pieces of fabric. Blood. Someone had been torn apart here, eaten whole. He shrugged, started to rise. A glint of something caught his eye. He looked through the fabric again, brought up the biggest piece, almost an entire garment. There was something on it. Something hard and shiny. Sheridan turned it over in his hands, but couldn’t figure out how to take it off, so he finally ripped it free. It was small. Three little rocks, on a pin. 

The fog lifted. Everything crashed in on him at once. He could smell the blood, the bright, coppery tang of it. Slick all over his fingers. Sheridan fell back, kicked against the floor, pushed himself back wildly until he hit the wall. He couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the pool of blood. Delenn’s blood. The remains of her pretty green dress. Her crystal pin. 

Something rough and broken tore its way out of his throat. It echoed up and down the corridor, like a wounded beast running wild. Sheridan put his head between his knees and wept.


End file.
